


Tension by Temptation

by superblackmarket



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M, Rickyl, Shorts, prompts, ratings vary but they go up to E, spoilers through season 6
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-04-07 20:48:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 39,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4277409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superblackmarket/pseuds/superblackmarket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A dumping ground for one-shots, drabbles and deleted scenes that aren't substantial enough to stand alone. All revolving around Daryl and Rick in some way. </p><p>1. Rick is haunted by Daryl's demons<br/>(...)<br/>23. Glenn is one up on Daryl<br/>24. Aaron can't stop worrying<br/>25. Hibernation season<br/>26. Beth has two secret crushes<br/>27. Two devils are better than one<br/>28. Pillow talk<br/>29. Secret no more<br/>30. Daryl has a new admirer<br/>31. and Rick has no intention of sharing</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Not Fade Away

Madness, creeping back in with autumn.

His own grief, crystallizing like frost on the ground.

Feeling the wrench more strongly each time he and Michonne ride past the gates. The roar of the Triumph can’t drown out his misgivings. A trail gone cold long before the weather. The open road unspooling before them, and infinity doesn’t hold the same appeal it once did.

“’Chonne –” he started.

“I know,” she said.

The next morning, Michonne rode off alone.

 

xxx

 

He had burnt Merle’s body so there was no grave to visit. Sometimes he pretended the empty plot they’d dug for Carol was really his brother’s. Jack and Jim to keep him company, a bottle apiece, flanking the lopsided wooden cross.

Going through plenty of them, Jack and Jim, with the new man Bob Stookey. Alcohol on his breath, reaching for Lil Asskicker, and Beth taking a step back, distaste writ across her face. And that was it, no more Jack, no more Jim. The wildness inside him hibernated, settling in for a long winter.

The influx of strangers might’ve made him a misanthrope but then he found himself sitting on the council with Hershel and Carol and Glenn and Sasha. They sat; he paced and fidgeted and tipped his chair back on its rear legs, but for some reason they still listened when he opened his mouth.

And the grief for Merle crystallized like nicotine on his lungs.

Frost on the ground and the madness took deeper root. Glenn brought it up to the council. “He keeps missing meals, Carl says it’s like he just forgets to eat. He spends hours at the fence, staring out at nothing. Beth can’t get him to take Judith anymore, it’s like he barely recognizes her.”

Four faces swiveled in his direction.

“What?” he growled.

He knew, of course he knew. It was why he had let Michonne ride off alone this time. Why he never tarried, on a hunting expedition, on a supply run, and returned before nightfall so he could sit beside him in the canteen and ask _how those cucumbers comin? you taught Carl how to plant tomatoes yet?_ But now the plants had withered and died and _what’s a farmer sposed ta do in winter?_ he asked Hershel and the old man replied _find a new hobby._ Well hobbies didn’t grow in prisons and the man had taken to wandering the grounds like a ghost in black denim and cowboy boots.

He didn’t know what to do.

“You’re closest to Rick,” Hershel said now. “You have to try and reach him, however you can.”

He took Rick hunting and the two of them tramped across acres of dead leaves and hollow forests. Not saying a word. He shot a rabbit and a wild turkey; Rick put his knife through the skull of a solitary walker.

They stopped so he could have a cigarette.

“I dream about your demons,” Rick said.

“What?” He’d let the cigarette burn past the filter but hardly felt the blistering heat under his fingertips til the pain turned sharp. “You what?” He stuck his burnt fingers in his mouth and sucked.

“The ones on your back,” Rick clarified. “I see them in my dreams, like they’ve gotten loose and started flying around. And I have to catch them, quick, and shove them back under your skin before they hurt you.”

“They aint dangerous, Rick,” he said at last, baffled and unnerved. Rick was staring at the ground, prodding the loam with a pointed stick. “’S why there’s two of them, ya know? Keep each other in check.”

“They want to hurt you,” Rick insisted.

A squirrel darted into sight, just a stone’s throw away. But he didn’t reach for his crossbow.

“I always imagined one as Merle an' one as me,” he said. “Never quite figured out which was holdin the other up, though.” The crystals on his lungs shivered and threatened to crack, but he breathed and they held fast.

“They never stay still long enough for me to catch them,” Rick said.

“You don’t have to,” he assured him. “They aint goin nowhere.” Rick didn’t look convinced so he pressed on. “You know what else I got there, schooled with a strap right across my back.” Rick just bit his lip. “Jumpin Jack Flash, ya know? ’S a gas? No?” Rick didn’t smile. “Point is, them demons subsided a long time ago. Just parta my skin now, like everythin else on my back. You aint gotta worry bout me, ya hear?”

Rick titled his head to the side and looked at him appraisingly, like Daryl was the one up and gone to crazytown.

“Bad dreams,” he told the council later. “Says he aint sleepin right.”

Later still, Carl peering round the curtain to his cell, tousle-haired and puffy-eyed. Relieved to find him awake. “He’s talking in his sleep. Keeps saying your name.”

_Goddammit Rick._

He lit a candle and slammed it down on Rick’s nightstand. The man was curled into a fetal position on his bunk, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets. His eyes were open.

“They got loose again,” Rick said.

He sat on the edge of the bunk. “’S’okay man, I got em safe.” Suppressing questions like _when you been checkin out my tattoos?_ and _how often d’you dream about me?_ and more to the point _you haunt my dreams too, you bastard_ and instead detangling the sheets from Rick’s legs.

“You’re sure?” Rick said, catching hold of his wrist. A grip of steel.

“Christ, you’re as bad as the rest of em, always tryna get my shirt off.” Trying to laugh it off but checking the curtain was pulled all the way shut before he started unbuttoning.

He was cold without his shirt. Had to be nearly – … he was forgetting the names of the months. He shivered and gave Rick his back.

A warm palm pressed against his shoulder blade, where the twin demons grappled or embraced, depending on their mood. He twisted to see and suddenly Rick’s eyes were boring into his, clear as winter ice. It was a look he knew well, he was often on the receiving end those first few weeks they spent together. Back when he was angry and volatile as a live grenade and Rick would will him into submission with those commanding blue eyes until he shut up and did as he was told. But he never used it anymore, didn’t have to, now that Daryl came to him of his own accord.

_I’m here, aint I? What more do you –_

Oh. _Oh._

It wasn’t gentle and there were too many teeth. The angle bent his neck back and he dug his fingers into Rick’s thigh.

Even after he pressed Rick down into the mattress, made sure he had a pillow between his head and the wall, got him open and wanting, Rick kept his hand splayed over the demons, holding them fast. His free hand roamed, stroking over cheeks and chest and flanks, nails digging in when Daryl was finally inside of him.

After, when Rick was holding him – for the act seemed to have restored Rick’s strength even as it drained his own – Rick finally unpeeled his palm and looked at it, as if expecting to see an imprint of the tattoos there.

“I’m sorry about your brother,” Rick said into the darkness.

He twisted round in Rick’s arms.

“I was afraid you blamed me. That you’d leave again.”

“ _Me_?” he said, incredulous. “You been actin all crazy on _my_ account?”

“Can’t do it without you,” Rick said, and in another one of those alarming reversals, he was suddenly thin-lipped and brooding again. “Everything’s shriveling up, dying. All the colors faded away. Another fucking winter.”

“Hey, winter aint so bad.” He tried for lightness. “Makes hunting easier, even a city slicker like you can find tracks in the snow.”

“I’m so tired.” Rick’s burning forehead burrowed into his neck.

“So rest. That’s what winter’s for, hibernatin.”

“Then we’ll die.”

“Nah man, ’s just a rest, aint some final thing. ’S a good death, a good winter. Then the snow melts an’ ya get ta come back.” He wasn’t entirely sure what they were talking about anymore.

“I just…” Rick pulled back to look at him. “You’ll stay?”

“Course I’m stayin, dumbass. Aint runnin out on nobody.”

“No, I mean – well, yeah, that too, but what I meant was, you’ll stay here tonight?”

He groaned, made a show of how uncomfortable it was, crammed into that narrow bunk, his long limbs hanging over the side of the mattress. But when he met Rick’s bright blue eyes he felt the pull of gravity lessen, felt himself lofted up into a high place where the air was crisp and cool.

“This is Asskicker’s first winter,” he said, and that made Rick smile, imagining his baby girl’s face brilliant with wonder at the first snowfall, reaching out to catch the flakes in her fat little fist.

 


	2. A Permanent Record

_He was sat on a stoop_ he remembers that much  _eleven or twelve. Black eye faded purple, cut lip reopening every time he moved his mouth. Smoking because he didn’t give a damn. Ma dead, what, a year? Maybe two. Long enough to get his skin flayed open on the regular til there was no healing, just raw welts making and remaking themselves on his back._

_Smoking is good; so’s sitting on the stoop of a closed-up store, nobody to run him off._

_The lady aint from round these parts, she’s dressed too good for that. Comes right up to him with her cashmere and her pearls, then there’s a flash of light and he’s blinking away spots._

_“I took your picture, I hope you don’t mind,” she says. Not a trace of Dixie, that’s a Yank accent for sure. “You have a very striking face,” she says, and he sneers, striking face, a face good for striking, she had that damn right._

_He sticks out a grubby paw, dirty nails and ragged cuticles. “An’ what do I get outta it?”_

_“I’m sorry?”_

_“How much you gonna pay me for my picture, lady?”_

_“I never pay for portraits,” she says. “That’s not how it works.”_

_“Gimme sumthin then, you got any smokes?”_

_“Not for you.” Mouth pursing. Gone from high-minded artist to bourgie cunt in a matter of seconds._

_“Fuck off, then.”_

_A few minutes later somebody tells him to fuck off too so he finds a different stoop to finish his smoke._

 

Rick found Daryl in the library, sitting on the floor with a book in his lap. A familiar enough sight, one he’d come to enjoy. Daryl was a prolific reader; he had _discernment._ He liked Flannery O’Connor and Faulkner – the familiar landscapes, the sweat-dripping humidity, the characters who talked like him and didn’t always get their apostrophes in the right places. He hated the Russians, baffled by their hysteria, their Siberian winters, their incomprehensible names disfigured into even more inscrutable nicknames. When he was too tired to read he’d flip through photo books, landscapes and faces, bands he’d never heard of playing rock’n’roll.

But something was off today. Rick saw the tension in his hunched shoulders, the corded tendons popping in his neck. And when Daryl turned to look at him, he had that haunted, backward-looking shadow on his face that usually meant the past had resurfaced, wrapping sticky tentacles around his ankles and trying to drag him back in.

He sat down beside Daryl. Wordlessly, Daryl passed him the book.

He knew, would have known, even without Daryl’s abrupt forefinger tapping the leftmost image. Black and white, just a kid in ripped overalls staring into the camera. A sharp little face, the delicate bone structure almost feminine. Black dahlia bruise blooming around the right eye. The terrible, sickening beauty of it, the way it was at once Daryl and not Daryl, the mouth too fragile and tender to be Daryl, the ancient, wary eyes too familiar to be anyone but.

He wished he could walk into that picture like it was an old black and white movie, scoop Daryl up and carry him to safety, to a different life where his bruises could have healed and his hollow cheeks filled out. A spasm of something like grief passed through him.

Gently Daryl tugged the book away from him, closed it, and replaced it haphazardly on the shelf. Then a hard, calloused hand curled around his wrist.

“Hey,” said Daryl, and it was awful, the times he meant to comfort Daryl always turned into Daryl comforting _him_ , “it was a long time ago. Jus’ took me by surprise, is all.” Still beautiful, so terribly beautiful in his rough-hewn way, but Rick’s heart ached for the lovely, fragile child in the photograph.

“ _Fragile_?” Daryl scoffed, reading him. “I’da kneecapped ya soon as look at ya.” He released Rick’s wrist and laced their fingers together instead. “I was jus’ pissed the bitch never paid me for my pretty face.”

Rick laughed a little. Squeezed Daryl’s hand.

“C’mon,” said Daryl, standing. “Got sumthin I been meanin ta show you over in Human Sexuality.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PS - if you ever have any prompts, or things you'd like to see... leave em in the comments!


	3. If It Aint a Fist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just to be clear, unless otherwise stated these fics aren't necessarily meant to be consistent with one another. so if i end up with a hundred "how they got together" stories...

“Wanna talk about something?”

Rick was keyed up, twitchy. Pacing the confines of the wine cellar like a tiger in a cage.

“No. I wanna sit in companionable silence.” He was in a foul temper.

Rick lowered himself to the ground and sat there a moment. _One Mississippi._ Then he popped up like a cork from a bottle and was back to pacing.

Daryl was cross-legged, utterly still. Not meditating or anything, just blending in. Merle’s death had made him indistinct around the edges.

“Hey Daryl?”

Wasn’t like Rick to be this jittery, this restless. Or to buzz round Daryl like a mosquito, begging to be swatted, like he didn’t know better. The two of them, they’d set off on foot that morning to check a supply cache one of the Woodbury folks mentioned. They found the supplies all right but then a herd found _them_ , so here they were hiding out in somebody’s underground wine cellar, the sun not even at its peak.

“Daryl-”

“Siddown and shaddup.”

Rick kept moving, running a finger over the dusty bottles lining the walls.

“What d’you say? It’ll pass the time.”

“No.” He wasn’t big on wine.

Sound of Rick popping the cork with his knife, the hiss of escaping vapors. In the beams of sunlight slanting through the trapdoor, he watched Rick raise the bottle to his lips and drink.

With a sigh he took the bottle when it was offered and put his lips where Rick’s had been. Fancy stuff. All warmth and no burn, like what folk used to serve in country clubs and toast to good health, big business, long life.

“Let’s do the questions.”

It was a game they played sometimes, just the two of them. Nobody else knew about it. They invented it that endless freezing winter after the farm fell, when they were still figuring out how to talk to each other. Daryl had taken Rick hunting with him, intuiting that the man needed a break from all the silent accusations and remonstrations, Lori’s most of all. The snow fell heavy that night and they had to hole up in an empty hunting shack til first light. Daryl at ease, Rick on razor edge. Let’s ask each other things, Rick said at last, and Daryl had snorted derisively. _Ask each other things_? What kind of stupid fucken game was that, he hadn’t played many games as a kid so why the hell would he start now? Hackles went up. Not like that, Rick said, clocking Daryl’s wariness. Just… random shit. Whatever comes into our heads.

But Daryl wasn’t good at innocuous either. He didn’t have favorite colors or favorite foods. He couldn’t think of anything to ask Rick, either, so the first couple attempts sputtered out. But after midnight, when they were huddling close for warmth by the tiny fire, Daryl allowed himself to be prodded and grudgingly gifted Rick an answer, which he hoarded to his person like deep-sea pearls.

The exchange went something like this:

_R: What do you miss most about the old world?_

_D: Jack shit_

_R: One thing._

_D: Radio. I miss the radio._

_R: Why?_

_D: You could get the fuck outta Dodge_

_R: What did you like best?_

_D: Folks with voices you could trust. Cash. Dylan. Waits. Nina Simone. Black dudes who sang the blues_

When it was Daryl’s turn to ask the questions, which he reluctantly agreed to do on their next just-the-two-of-them expedition a few weeks later, he was careful and pedantic to a fault, stringing out long associative chains that had Rick tripping over his feet.

_D: Why were you a cop?_

_R: I wanted to protect and serve._

_D: That don’t mean shit ta me, it mean sumthin ta you?_

_R: It did_

_D: Not anymore?_

_R: Well it sure wasn’t about the money_

_D: What was money_

_R: Power_

_D: What’s power now_

_R: Leading. Providing._

There were unspoken rules. Question and answer, nothing superfluous. Like a drug, it lulled them into trust. Some of it was flippant, some of it was vulnerable and revealing. Daryl liked the rhythm of it, even when he didn’t like the questions.

_R: If you could bring one person back_

_D: No. We aint goin there._

Rick asked him that one when they were crouched by a frozen stream, breaking a hole in the ice for water to wash with. Rick still had all his family back then, Carl and Lori and that tadpole in Lori’s belly. Daryl knew Rick wanted him to turn the question back round so he could answer _Shane. I’d bring Shane back, and do it different this time_ but Daryl wasn’t gonna give him that. Not because he wanted to punish him. It was always gonna be Rick or Shane, he’d realized before either of them did, and he was damn glad that it was Rick. No, he didn’t take the bait because he knew no good came of thinking that way, in what-ifs and counterfactuals. That was how you lost your mind and Daryl could see it in Rick’s face, when he dipped into the brooding side of madness. Daryl wanted to keep Rick out of subjunctives and conditionals and firmly rooted in the present.

The last time they played before reaching the prison, they were gaunt and starving. Daryl was slipping his food to Lori and Rick gave his to Carl. Both Leader and Provider were dizzy and lightheaded. Rick asked something he never woulda dared if he wasn’t out of his mind with hunger, and Daryl gave him an answer because he was too darn shakey to hand him an excuse.

_R: How much did you love Merle?_

_D: More’n anyone._

By then they were well past the verbal stage, and they finished the exchange with their eyes. _I’m sorry_ , Rick said. _S’okay_ , Daryl said back. _I don’t blame you._

Then it was the prison, and Lori died, and T-Dog, and Carol too til Daryl found her again. There was no more time for games, ’specially not heavy ones like theirs. Rick took the nearest tram and traveled far, far away to the fourth dimension, where the dead mingled with the living like they used to do in popular imagination, before the walkers came and took all the beauty out of it.

Daryl found him outside the fences, hacking at the wild grass with a dull machete, talking to Lori who wasn’t there. Daryl musta scared her off or something, cos Rick rounded on him with a snarl, machete raised. Daryl caught the downswing on his knife with a loud clang and it was Rick who pulled away, shaking out his wrist with a bemused expression on his face.

Daryl hadn’t planned to start the game up, but Rick slipped into its cadences automatically.

_R: You ever want kids before all this?_

_D: Wasn’t good enough_

_R: What first rattled your cage_

_D: My momma never gave me no nipple_

Rick nodded like that answered something for him and went back to punishing the grass.

Things got funny between them in the weeks that followed, after Daryl left and came back with his brother in tow. Words said in haste, in desperation ( _I need you_ ) echoed between them and Rick looked at him different now.

 _Need_ was something they could both acknowledge; their time apart was a painful lesson in necessity. Rick always looked at Daryl like he needed him, but needing was frugal and fundamental and lived near your stomach.

To _want_ – now that was an audacious thing in the new world. Who dared stand up and say _I want_ , when survival stood on the edge of a knife? They had no business wanting, none of them. Daryl had learned not to want a long time ago. It kept his mind quiet and his heart cold and his cock quiescent.

Now Rick looked at Daryl like he _wanted_ him, too. _Wanted_ with those three dangerous vital organs, mind heart cock, nothing to do with his stomach and what he needed to stay alive.

Daryl feared for him. Once the _want_ infiltrated the _need_ you were fucked, you’d forgotten how to survive.

_R: What do you want?_

_D: To keep everyone safe_

_R: Why don’t you ask me what I want?_

_D: Because I know what you want_

Back in his right mind now, Rick hadn’t liked that one bit. He’d put his hands on his hips and fixed Daryl with the Grimes stare. But Daryl knew Rick knew he was right. This wasn’t the time. Rick had said it himself, not ten minutes before: _We’re goin to war._

He knew what Rick wanted, and somewhere between Merle dying and this moment in the wine cellar he had realized he wanted the same thing. Even though it might get them killed. Even though it had already got Merle killed.

“Let’s do the questions,” Rick said.

But he was still angry, so angry. Need and want knotted up in his gut.

He cracked his knuckles.

_R: How much did you love Merle?_

He reeled. That was a low blow. Against the rules. You couldn’t recycle questions. Cos that implied the answer had changed.

“Fuck you.” He hated Rick in that moment, hated him for playing dirty. Hated him for knowing him so goddam well.

_R: How much did you love Merle?_

If he answered truthfully, everything would change. But maybe it already had, maybe it had been changing for a long time now.

_R: How much did you love Merle?_

_D: Not as much as –_

It wasn’t pretty, and it was delivered with a reflexive punch to the mouth. He took a step back, appalled at himself, but that was how he’d been raised, _if it aint a fist it isn’t love,_ and only now did it occur to him, watching Rick dab gingerly at his bleeding lip, that maybe he should have used his mouth instead of his knuckles.

“I should have expected that,” Rick was saying ruefully, his own _coulda woulda shoulda_ dragging him back into the subjunctive. Daryl took a step forward again, mesmerized by the rapid swelling of Rick’s lower lip, how pink and plump it looked. “I didn’t mean to,” he said vaguely, drifting closer, a moth to the flame. _One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Want_ and _need_ suddenly indivisible; the first fissures were cracking his heart wide open.

And then Rick was all around him like quicksilver.  

 


	4. Interzone

“What’s your deal?” she finally asked during their second week together. By then she’d grown accustomed to stripping down around him while he never so much as took off his shirt in front of her.

“Huh?” He was squinting at a map. The trail had gone cold a few days ago, but she told him they ought to canvas south just to be sure the one-eyed sonuvabitch hadn’t given them the slip. He’d been skeptical, and she got the distinct impression that he was humoring her, even as he studied the map with every appearance of concentration. “My _deal_?”

“Do you like girls? Do you like boys? Gay? Straight? Bi? Tri?”

“Jesus, Michonne.” He huffed and puffed and fiddled with his crossbow; teasing him was almost too easy. It was like throwing darts into a mountain of jello, no solid hits, just a lot of quivering and twitching.

So she thought, but then he said, “I usedta be a Mormon. Had eight wives an’ twelve kids an’ we lived in a covered wagon,” and his face was so expressionless she didn’t know if he was joking or not.

“ _No_ ,” she said.

“Damn right,” he said, and she almost missed the sly little wink he shot her from under his bangs.

“You’re full of shit,” she said gleefully.

 

“I know you’re getting some,” she told him a few days later, swiping the wax he used on his bowstring to twist her dreads into submission. “It’s obvious.”  

“How d’ya figure?” Still no Governor and she could sense his frustration mounting, but at least today they’d cleared a pharmacy and found him a fresh pack of cigarettes. So now he sat crosslegged, back against a tree, puffing away in a decent temper.

“Well,” she said, and it came back to her, a bit of innuendo from a party years ago. “If you’re not getting any, if you’re all uptight and closed off, then your ass is like this.” She held up a clenched fist and took a few mincing steps. “But if you’re chill, you’re getting laid, you’re open to the world, then your ass is like _this_.” She made an open circle with her fingers and swayed her hips, imitating his easy loping stride. “Your ass has spoken, Daryl.”

He turned scarlet. “You sayin I take it up the ass?” he growled, the heat rolling off him in waves, and she would have been wary of a fight except they’d saved each other’s lives too many times now to come undone over a joke at the expense of his sphincter.

“I’m not saying anything,” she said, trying not to laugh. “My ass is like that too.” And she brandished her loosened fist in his scowling face.

 

He never told her outright but she figured it out for herself when they returned to the prison and Rick was waiting, scarcely a nod to her before he was bundling Daryl inside and out of sight, and the last thing she heard was a low, gasping moan.

The next morning she watched closely when they walked into the canteen together. But Daryl’s gait was fluid and graceful as ever, and it was Rick who perched gingerly on the bench, his weight more on his thighs than his ass. She grinned at Daryl and maybe, just maybe, he winked back before returning his attention to Rick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm hard at work on your prompts now! If you're so inspired, please continue to leave ideas in the comments, I'm loving em.
> 
> PS - How about that Season 6 trailer, eh?


	5. Seen and Unforeseen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a prompt from Summerjaz, who wanted to know how other people in the prison might view Daryl & Rick.

Half the prison turned out to welcome them back, even folks who didn’t know who ‘they’ were. Swept up in the excitement, Lizzie and her sister joined the crowd, standing on their tiptoes and jumping up and down to peer over the sea of broad backs.

All the important people stood out in front: Dr. Greene, Glenn-and-Maggie, Sasha, and Ms. Carol too of course. But with them was that aloof, enigmatic man Mr. Grimes; Lizzie’s daddy called him the Farmer in the Dell. They rarely saw him. He was always out in his garden, well away from the main hub of activity. But here he was now, his son Carl at his heels, standing at the fore of all these people like he belonged there.

Why _him_? Lizzie wondered. Why did _he_ get to be the first to welcome home whomever it was they were welcoming?

Her sister tugged her elbow. “What’s happening?” Mika demanded. “I can’t see anything.”

“The farmer man Mr. Grimes is standing in front, and Ms. Carol’s there too,” Lizzie narrated. “They’re opening the gates now-”

She was drowned out by the roar of an engine. The crowd surged forward and she caught a glimpse of an evil-looking motorcycle puling into the courtyard, two figures astride it. Impatient, she abandoned Mika and darted into the throng, nimbly winding her way through the close-packed bodies until she popped out somewhere near the front.

Disembarking from the motorbike were two of the most fearsome people she had ever seen.

The woman was compact and tightly coiled. Her midnight sun gleamed in the afternoon sun and she had hair like Lizzie had never seen before, Medusa locks twining around her shoulders. Her face was a mask, hard and unreadable. And she had a sword strapped to her back. An honest-to-god real sword, like the one King Arthur pulled out of a stone.

The man beside her was less striking but all the more unsettling in appearance. He was the baddest, meanest sonuvabitch she’d ever laid eyes on. Lean and muscular, armed to the teeth, an ugly black crossbow over his shoulder. He had a strange, angular face, with high cheekbones that set him apart from the square-jawed good looks of men like Tyreese and her daddy. But it was his eyes, narrow alley cat eyes, that had her quaking in her boots.

She followed the laser beam of those eyes and found them fixed on the man in front, Mr. Grimes, who was striding towards them. Lizzie wanted to sprint after Mr. Grimes and throw her skinny arms around his waist to hold him back. Those two strangers were lethal, and what was he doing, marching up to them empty-handed without so much as a knife on his belt?

She squeezed her eyes shut and screwed up her face, waiting for the swish of a sword or the dull thud of an arrow. But none came. Peeking through her lashes, she saw something incredible: the new man patted Mr. Grimes’s tummy like he was a lucky Buddha, and then he ducked his head while Mr. Grimes kept right on looking.

Lizzie realized her mouth was hanging open like a spaz.

Mr. Grimes asked the man something she couldn’t hear. The man gave a tiny shake of his head and Mr. Grimes nodded like he hadn’t expected any different.

Then Mr. Grimes shook hands with the woman, and her assassin’s face split open in a broad, white grin. The three of them laughed at something.

And then Dr. Greene, Ms. Carol and the others swarmed around the newcomers, and Lizzie lost sight of them. She went back to Mika, who was sulking something awful after being abandoned.

 

xxx

 

Glenn said Daryl Dixon was like a cat with fleas and Michonne wasn’t any better. Lizzie was obsessed with him. She got that way about people sometimes; fear and fascination had always been a heady mixture for her. So Mika watched him too.

There _was_ something catlike about Daryl Dixon, with his nocturnal eyes and silent tread, but Mika saw lots of other animals in him too. He could look real slit-eyed coyote mean sometimes, and he could strike like a cobra. Lizzie made them sit in the courtyard and watch while he trained people how to shoot guns and use knives.

She thought maybe she’d say hello to him one day, it seemed rude to spend so much time staring at a person you didn’t know. But Lizzie said he would wring her neck like a rubber chicken and she’d better stay away.

Mika thought Lizzie just wanted Daryl Dixon all to herself.

 

xxx

 

It was him who caught her at it one evening, just as dusk fell. Lizzie was standing at the fence as usual, playing tug-of-war with one of her favorites. She’d found a bit of rope earlier and she convinced the walker, a boy not much older than herself, to sink his teeth into one end. Back and forth they pulled, the boy snuffling happily.

But then a heavy hand descended on her shoulder, yanking her back. The rope slipped from her fingers and her playmate jerked it through the fence, victorious. Quick as a whippet, she squirmed away from the hand, but he trapped her arms behind her back.

Daryl Dixon glared down at her, eyes smoking like two chips of dry ice. “The hell ya playin at, kid?” he barked, towing her further from the fence.

“N-nothing.” Lizzie went limp in his grip; she knew when to play dead.

“Too long behind the walls, you forget these things was dangerous?” He shook her slightly and her teeth rattled in her head.

“No, Mr. Dixon.”

“They aint yer friends, they aint yer pets,” Daryl Dixon told her. “Don’t be stupid, girl.”

Lizzie felt betrayed. She thought he would be different, like her, because he wasn’t afraid of them. But no. _He_ was the stupid one, stupid as all the other grown-ups. Hiding her disappointment, Lizzie nodded her head and blinked her wide eyes. “I’m sorry, Mr. Dixon,” she said humbly.

He released her arms, but he looked totally unimpressed by her show of piety. “You keep teasin them things, they’ll break down the fence an’ have us for dinner,” he warned.

Lizzie curled her lip; he couldn’t even talk properly.

Daryl Dixon wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was staring at the small huddle of walkers still rattling the fence. He stalked toward them, unsheathing his knife. Suddenly he drove it through several skulls in a quick succession of pulpy thuds, and when he wrenched his knife free, Lizzie saw _her_ walker fall.

She screamed.

And kept on screaming, even after Daryl Dixon had her by the shoulders and was towing her away. She dug her heels into the dirt and fought him tooth and nail, clawing up his restraining arm until it was covered with red scratches. But he just threw her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She dangled upside down, swinging to and fro and pummeling his back as he marched back up the hill to the prison. Her tears and snot dribbled down his back.

He dumped her at Ms. Carol’s feet and left her there to snivel without a word of explanation. Then he made a beeline for Mr. Grimes, who was standing nearby with his son Carl. Ms. Carol mopped her face with a wet cloth and didn’t ask any questions.

 

xxx

 

Lucas had a new teddy bear, soft and plush, and when Mika asked him where he got it he said Daryl Dixon brought it back for him.

That got her thinking. Lizzie said they didn’t like Daryl Dixon anymore, that he was a stupid idiot murderer and she’d get even, if it was the last thing she ever did. But Lizzie was always mad at someone, and Lucas _said_ …

She spotted him bent over one of the cars, doing something under the hood. She clutched a canteen of chilled water before her like an offering and approached.

His arms were smeared black with grease and sweat, and she saw some kind of tattoo peeking out from under his sleeveless shirt.

“Mr. Dixon?” She gulped when he stood up straight, shaking dirty hair out of his eyes. He looked annoyed. Hastily she thrust the canteen at him.

He didn’t say “thank you.” He just took it with a grunt and guzzled the contents. Mika watched with wide-eyed apprehension.

Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “’S goin on, Mika?”

Daryl Dixon knew her name. Her mouth fell open.

“C’mon kid, aint got all day,” Daryl Dixon said, folding his arms.

“Lucas said…” she began shyly, raising her eyes from his dusty boots to his narrow blue eyes. “He said you found the teddy bear for him. I was wondering… do you – do you think you could look for a doll next time, if it isn’t too much trouble?”

“A doll, huh?” Daryl Dixon said.

“Only if it’s not too much trouble,” she whispered.

He handed her the empty canteen. “I’ll see what I can do.”

 

xxx

 

She just _had_ to ditch Mika, Mika the traitor, Mika who carried that stupid doll everywhere and wouldn’t shut up about Daryl Dixon this, Daryl Dixon that, Daryl Dixon let her sit on Flame and led the pony around the _entire field_ and then he gave her a tomato from Mr. Grimes’s garden.

Lizzie was so angry she kept pinching Mika under the table throughout dinner. Of course Mika started crying like the big stupid baby she was and Lizzie was going to slap her if she didn’t get away. So she stormed out into the courtyard. The night air was chilly and her arms got goose pimples.

Two shadowy figures stood close together at the far side of the courtyard. Lizzie’s heart skipped a beat when she recognized the tense profile of Daryl Dixon. Which meant the other man had to be Mr. Grimes, because Daryl Dixon didn’t stand close to anyone except Mr. Grimes. She inched forward.

Daryl Dixon moved quick as a striking snake, shoving Mr. Grimes against the wall and pinning him there with his whole body. Mr. Grimes’s head tipped back and Lizzie saw the pale line of his throat exposed in the moonlight. Daryl Dixon lowered his head and Mr. Grimes made the strangest sound, halfway between a gasp and a sob.

 

xxx

 

Mika yelped in pain and struck out blindly. Then Lizzie’s palm was over her mouth.

“Shut up,” Lizzie hissed, pinching her again. “Guess what?”

“I don’t care,” Mika moaned sleepily, trying to burrow back into sleep.

“ _Listen_ ,” Lizzie insisted. “Daryl Dixon is a vampire.”

“Don’t be stupid, Lizzie.” She pulled the pillow over her head. “Go to sleep.”

“He’s a vampire and he sucks Mr. Grimes’s blood,” Lizzie said viciously. “Pass it on.”

 

xxx

 

The watchtower didn’t offer much protection from the wind, but it was the only place in the prison where no one could sneak up on you.

As Rick pushed his shirt aside to nibble at his collarbone, Daryl shivered and remembered something. “Ya know that kid Lucas?” he said.

Rick sat back on his heels with a sigh of obvious exasperation. “Which one is he?”

“Little un with the curly mop,” Daryl said. “Today he asked me if I was a vampire.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“That we had enough real monsters ta worry about. An’ then he asked if I drank your blood.”

“ _My_ blood?” Rick’s eyebrows shot towards his hairline.

“Yeah,” Daryl said. “Ya think somebody saw somethin?”

He’d chewed his nails down to the quick earlier, thinking about it, but Rick didn’t seem alarmed. “We’ve been too careful.”

“There was that one time,” Daryl reminded him. “Outside.”

“As I remember, that was all _you_ ,” Rick said, reaching for him again, kissing him nice and sweet. They just _fit_ , the two of them. Simple as that. Daryl quit arguing and opened his arms and legs like he was welcoming Rick home.


	6. Up in Heaven (Not Only Here)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a prompt from MermaidSheenaz, who requested _Rick's greying beard + Rick's body hair + established relationship, prison era._ There was just no way to do it politely, so here we are, rudegirls and rudeboys.

The mirrors started appearing a few months after the Woodbury folk moved in. First was the small hand mirror that Zack found for Beth, then Glenn almost died bringing a full-length back for Maggie because he refused to wield it against oncoming walkers.  “It’s seven years’ bad luck,” he defended himself when Daryl excoriated him for  _fuck-brained idiocy_ later, “Haven’t we had enough?” After that the requests poured in thick and fast, and the run crews seldom returned without a new mirror to add to the prison’s ever-growing collection.

Rick watched the reflective surfaces multiply with bemused detachment. The warped, metallic mirrors in the bathroom had always suited him just fine. Carl and Patrick liked to pull faces and let the rippled metal distort their reflections. Other than that, Rick never took much notice. It had been months since he’d got a decent look at himself, and any residual vanity had long since trickled away. If he had blood or muck on his face, he figured someone would tell him.

“You sure you don’t want one, Rasputin?” Michonne cackled, maneuvering past him in the hallway with her own new mirror, which she would later prevail upon Daryl to fasten to her wall. Rick was miffed that Michonne found such glee in mocking his beard. Hershel had given up shaving as well, and everyone remarked how sage and distinguished he looked. But Michonne had taken to describing _his_ face like it was losing the Alamo.

“Are we really gonna do this again?” he demanded, but she just pulled a long face and sauntered past with her prize.

Maggie said it was just life getting back to normal, people having a care for how they looked again. But Rick had more important things to dwell on. Life was… _different_ , these days. Not just the populous bustle transforming the prison into a real community, or even his decision to hang up his gun and turn leadership over to the council. Part of it was his children. Judith, who was plump and cheerful with a sunny disposition to rival Beth’s, and Carl, who had lost the psychopathic glint in his eye and was slipping into the rhythms of childhood once again.

The other part was Daryl.

Rick thought if he looked into a mirror today, he would see not himself but Daryl. Daryl, his dark twin. They were like that now, strange reflections of one another, moving and breathing and thinking in unison.

Sometimes the sight of Daryl, naked and washed in silver moonlight, so astonished Rick that all he could do was sit with him for a time and touch him as one might a rare animal until Daryl, grown weary of scrutiny, would nudge him down and climb atop him, or, as the mood took them, lie back and pull Rick into him.

Once they began to move, they would sigh in relief and Daryl might even smile, every time thrilled and aghast to find themselves utterly safe and protected. That was the strange and entirely unexpected component of their new proximity – how safe, how ordinary, how fucking _normal_ it felt.

Different, but not different at all.

In their work they became more zealous, more dutiful. Rick would attack his garden with the ferocity of a man possessed, and Daryl would hunt, recruit, and lead his expeditions beyond the fences with renewed vigor so he could be home by dusk. Secure in the night, Daryl insisted they take no chances in the day and act remote but friendly with each other. Sometimes they pulled it off, but Daryl was just as hungry for contact as Rick and they forgot to check a touch that lingered too long or a glance that turned heated. Other times Daryl jerked away, rejection in the tense lines of his body but never in the azure depths of his eyes.

Then, in the darkness of the night, with the cell curtained, they fucked with a charged tenderness that left them spent but sated. They always meant to rise well before dawn so the visitor could creep back to his own cell, but occasionally even Daryl couldn’t drag himself from their warm cocoon and had to take his chances at first light.  

 

xxx

 

He made himself at home in Daryl’s cell, waiting for the other man to come off watch. A spare quiver of crossbow bolts, the Navajo poncho, a collection of lighters – all typical Daryl paraphernalia, but incongruously, the walls were plastered with children’s artwork, tokens of love from his gaggle of admirers. So much had changed, Rick reflected, since the early days when only Carol and Dale saw anything of value in the taciturn archer. 

Daryl arrived, silent as always, and blushed a little to see Rick studying the drawings, some of which bore captions like _thank you for the deers_ and _me and Daryl have a tea party._ “I can’t throw em away,” he said defensively, leaning his crossbow against the wall. He sat next to Rick on the bunk and pulled something out of his pocket. “Found this for ya.”

Rick took it and realized he was holding a compact shaving mirror. Instinctively his hand went to his beard, smoothing the short bristles self-consciously. “You teaming up with Michonne?” he asked, suppressing a twinge of annoyance. _For Daryl of all people –_

“Whaddaya mean?” said Daryl. “Brought one back for just about everybody by now. Didn’t want ya feelin left out.”

“Oh.” His hackles went down. “Thought you were trying to tell me I should –”

“Shave?” Daryl interrupted, the corner of his mouth curling upward. “Fuck, no. I’d miss this too much.” He tugged his collar aside, revealing a rash of red bumps at the base of his neck.

“Sorry,” Rick said, none too penitently, because his chest was littered with tiny bruises where Daryl had marked him with his teeth. “Glad you like my face the way it is.”

Daryl bumped their knees together. “Hated your stupid face when we first met,” he said. “Thought you looked like a damn boy scout. All clean-cut, wearin that uniform like you was playin dress-up.”

“Well, I hated your face, too,” Rick said, remembering the blood-spattered hellion who’d chucked a brace of squirrels at his head. “Thought you were the meanest-looking sonuvabitch I’d ever laid eyes on.”

Daryl snorted. “Still am, don’t you forget it.” He dug a sharp elbow into Rick’s side. “Got you the mirror cos I thought you oughta know. What ya look like now.”

“That bad, huh?” Rick said lightly, playing with the clasp on the mirror.

“Aint about that.” Daryl shifted beside him. “You’re different. Should see for yourself.”

That was unusually cryptic, even for Daryl. Reluctantly, Rick opened the compact and braced himself for the worst.

It was like looking into a kaleidoscope. Gradually the bits and pieces assembled themselves into something resembling a face, and he found himself focusing on his nose because that, that struck a chord of recognition. He could look at it and think _right, yeah, that’s my nose_ , the same straight, jutting prow it had always been. But the nose forced him to concede that the rest of it must belong to him, too, even if he couldn’t for the life of him understand how it had come to be. The eyes were the right shade of blue, lighter than Daryl’s stormy ones. But the gaze was hard and level, not youthful and merry as it was in the family portrait Carl had brought back for Judith. Now tiny lines fanned out from their corners and his skin was tanned and weathered from the elements. And of course the damn beard was there, claiming the lower half of his face. It obscured the vulnerable softness of his mouth, which he was grateful for. The shock was how flecked with grey it was. He hadn’t expected that, he wasn’t even fucking forty, but the damn thing was growing in like he was already an old man.

And in a way he _did_ look like Daryl, just as he’d imagined. Not literally, of course, but now his features bore the same kind of contradiction he’d always found so arresting in Daryl’s. Daryl had the cheekbones, the winged clavicle, that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Russian model, but his wary eyes, his crooked nose, the sinewy leanness of his body and the irregular topography of his back told a different story. And now Rick recognized the same unsettling quality in himself – the commanding nose, the vigilant eyes, the romantic mouth, the beard that was more salt than pepper, different selves, past present and future, all flickering across a single face.

“Could be twins, huh?” said Daryl, uncannily perceptive as always. _An’ you aint old_ , he added silently.

“Is that what you wanted me to see?” Rick asked, closing the mirror with a snap, resting a hand just above Daryl’s knee, feeling the warmth of skin through his jeans.

“Wanted you ta see what I see,” Daryl replied. He no longer stiffened when Rick touched him unexpectedly, just eased into it slowly like contact was a hot bath and he had to grow accustomed to the temperature.

Rick inched his forefinger through the hole in Daryl’s jeans, caressing his scarred bony knee. Daryl squirmed away, grunting something like _tickles._

“You’re so _smooth_ ,” he lamented a few minutes later when they were partially undressed, running a hand down Daryl’s chest and leaning in to bite at his nipples. He never ceased to be amazed at the sleekness of Daryl’s skin, the way it stretched over muscle and bone taut as a drum.

“Quit,” Daryl growled, shoving at him. The last time Rick had bit his nipple, he’d yelped in a much higher register than usual and Rick couldn’t help laughing. Even now, the memory made him grin. But suddenly Daryl was lunging forward, dragging his teeth through the fine hairs covering Rick’s chest and tugging, as if to prove a point. They tussled a bit, Daryl’s teeth pulling hard enough to make his eyes water. His breathing picked up as Daryl drifted further south, trusting Daryl, but wincing at the thought of those sharp teeth anywhere near his dick.

He needn’t have worried. Seconds later he was groaning and digging his fingers into Daryl’s hair, murmuring his usual litany of _you don’t have to, please, if you don’t want to_ and Daryl was ignoring him as usual, his mouth so hot and wet that Rick saw entire constellations. He let his hands roam, stroking the familiar beloved forehead, cheekbones, the mouth pursed firmly around his cock.

Daryl was a reluctant artist, pulling off periodically to complain. “Jaw fucken aches,” he grunted, shaking the hair back from his eyes and keeping Rick momentarily occupied with his hand before he plunged back down. “Hurry up, won’t ya?” he surfaced to say a few minutes later, flicking his tongue against the twitching head of Rick’s cock. “This aint an endurance test.”

If it had been, Rick would have lost. He came with a long, poorly-stifled moan, clutching at hair, shoulders, anything, as Daryl sucked him through it. When Daryl finally drew away, tongue catching a stray drop of cum as it ran down his chin, he spoke with an asperity that was immediately belied by the rough tenderness in his eyes. “Aintcha ever gonna learn ta shut up?” he admonished. “Bet half the prison heard you caterwaulin.”

Rick was too boneless to pay him any mind, splayed on the bed like a beached jellyfish and trying to remember how to breathe. Daryl lay flushed and sweaty beside him, striving to look grumpy, but Rick could feel the smugness radiating off him in waves.

He couldn’t have said how long they lay there, him clutching the sharp protrusion of Daryl’s hipbone, Daryl’s fingertips lightly carding through his chest hair. His eyelids began to droop and Daryl was patient, controlled, until another painful yank reminded him that Daryl was still hard and suddenly he, too, was awake and stiffening all over again. He half-rolled onto Daryl and Daryl lounged around him like a cat, drawing up a leg, a heel that rubbed along his thigh and rested roughly at the base of his spine. Pulling him close, so close, he forgot where he began and Daryl ended.  

Afterward, he found himself twice-reflected in Daryl’s enormous pupils as they lay nose-to-nose, crammed together on the narrow bunk. Skin sticky with all sorts of unspeakable things that he would have to agonizingly scrub from the down on his belly tomorrow, while Daryl, damn him, could just brush off his seal-smooth hide and be clean again.

“Like lookin at yourself now?” Daryl said, his leg slotted between Rick’s.

“Only like this,” he said, and began to elaborate on something profound, about seeing himself through Daryl’s eyes and liking himself better that way, because the Daryl prism was so much more generous and forgiving than his own. But –

 _Shaddup,_ Daryl said, reaching around to pinch out the candle, plunging them into blackness.

_But it was deep._

_Weren’t deep enough for ya already?_

_Asshole._ He delivered a sleepy punch to Daryl’s shoulder. _You know what I mean._

 _Maybe in the morning._ Daryl’s soft chuckle was the last thing he heard before he drifted off.


	7. Black Like Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jetb10 was curious about seeing more of Daryl & Rick from different points of view.

First watch fell to him and Glenn that night, a chilly starless one which saw them holing up in yet another drafty hunting cabin somewhere deep in the woods. But when he’d gathered his pack and made sure his Glock had a full chamber, it was Daryl who ambled over to meet him, crossbow on his back and a cigarette drooping from his mouth.

“Thought I was sharing with Glenn,” he said uncertainly.

Daryl shrugged. “Korea aint feelin good so said I’d take it.”

He eyed the man a bit warily. Not that he really expected some long-suppressed vestige of Merle to flare up in Daryl, but inbred hatred had a long half-life. _That redneck went out of his way to save your ass,_ Dale – god rest his soul – reminded him, so he shrugged and nodded.

“Imma take perimeter loop,” Daryl said in his clipped drawl. “You stay put over there.” He indicated a tree some hundred feet away from the cabin.

T nodded and planted himself as directed, relieved the two of them wouldn’t be tramping through the woods in the dark with none but the other for company. It hadn’t been a conscious thing, making sure he was never alone with Daryl, but they maneuvered around each other and seldom exchanged so much as a word. If he was doomed to ride out the apocalypse with a bunch of gunslinging white folks, he figured it was prudent to stick near ones like Rick and Hershel, who were either too well-meaning or too god-fearing to go all supremacist on his ass.

Daryl dissolved into the trees like a ghost and he let out the breath he’d been holding. Someone extinguished the last candle inside the cabin and he shivered in the darkness. Rummaged through his pack for another layer and found something orange crumpled at the bottom. It wouldn’t warm him but suddenly an even more important function dawned on him and he pulled the fluorescent vest over his head. 

He had scarcely straightened up again when Daryl materialized at his side. He jumped; the man had come from an entirely different direction and it unnerved T that he could slink around so noiselessly. Like a goddam predator.

“You goin duck hunting, man?” Daryl hissed.

T squinted at him. “Huh?”

“Cos there aint no ducks round here.”

“The hell you talkin about?” he demanded, forgetting to keep his voice down and Daryl shushed him violently.

“Lose the fucken vest,” Daryl snapped. “Don’t you know nuthin, dumbass? Bright color attracts the dead bastards.”

He was right, of course, and T felt stupid as he did what he was told and stuffed it away. So he hadn’t spent much time in the woods before all this. So he was Atlanta born and bred and wore his inner-city credentials with pride. So fucking sue him. They hadn’t all been raised by wolves.  

Daryl was still there, rocking back and forth on his heels a little.

“ _What_?” he whispered.

“What ya doin with that damn thing, anyway?” Daryl asked.

“Belonged to my cousin,” T said, repressing the memory of the same cousin dead on the street, walkers pulling out his innards. “He used to work security at a construction yard, make sure nobody stole shit.”

Daryl shrugged.

“Boss made him wear it all night long so nobody shot the brother,” T explained.

“This aint Atlanta and I toldja there aint no ducks,” said Daryl.

“It’s dark out,” he said defensively. “Didn’t want you shooting me by mistake.”

“You aint that black, brother,” Daryl said, and T stared at him in slack-jawed amazement. Then Daryl’s mouth twitched and he had to swallow down the loud guffaw that was trying to bust out of him.

It became a thing between them after that, where he would ask Daryl if something was dark enough and Daryl would reply no, still weren’t black enough to suit him. And when he managed to build a campfire to Daryl’s liking he started singing out ‘Young, Gifted & Black’ and Daryl said, Man, you only one’a them things but I’ll let you take your pick.

Rick took him aside after that and asked if everything was all right between him and Daryl. The leader was acting all jittery, eyes trained on Daryl as he loaded up the Hyundai across camp. “We don’t got shit in common ’cept family in the same goddam penitentiary,” T said, “but we got an understanding.”

He wasn’t sure if Rick believed him because after that it seemed like Rick was always watching. Like he expected one of them to start beating the living shit out of the other at any second. Like he didn’t trust him laughing at Daryl, and Daryl smiling back crookedly like he’d forgotten how to use the muscles. It started pissing him off, how often he caught Rick looking.

But gradually it dawned on T that Rick wasn’t watching _them_ or even _him_ , he was watching _Daryl._ All the time watching. And Dixon, that damn skittish creature, he stared right back.


	8. Mellow Moods

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this make fitofpique smile.

“Is this what I think it is?” Glenn held up the baggie for Daryl’s inspection.

His companion squinted at it. “Yep,” he said, and went back to rummaging through the cupboards for anything they could scavenge.

Glenn emptied a carton of precious AA batteries into his pack and waited for Daryl to finish up. He turned the baggie over in his hands and it wasn’t a conscious decision to pocket it, he just sort of did. But Daryl had eyes in the back of his head. “We aint bringin that back with us,” he said. “There’s kids at the prison.”

Well, _duh_ , and it wasn’t like he’d be using it in front of them, if he used it at all. But now Daryl was hardcore judging him, looking all disdainful with a hand braced on his hip. He’d picked that pose up from Rick. And like Glenn was gonna believe _Daryl_ of all people had never –

“Medicinal?” he hedged. “Maybe Hershel –”

“You gonna give that to your pa-in-law?” Daryl said, raising an eyebrow that could only be described as _supercilious_ , and okay, maybe it wasn’t the best idea. If Hershel flipped then _Maggie_ would flip and then... There wasn’t much left anyway.

“Wanna smoke it now?” he said, going for broke.

“Ya ever been high before?” Daryl said, smirking like a bastard.

“Yeah, I – _in college_ ,” Glenn said defensively. “My roommate had a bong and sometimes when we were playing _Zelda_ – that’s a videogame-”

“Uh huh,” said Daryl.

“– we’d like, you know…” 

“Uh huh,” Daryl said.

They loaded their haul into the car but Daryl didn’t start the engine right away. He pulled the cigarette from behind his ear and seemed to contemplate it. “A’ight, give it here,” he said abruptly.

“Seriously?” Glenn fished the baggie out of his pocket and tossed it over.

He watched with rapt fascination as Daryl began picking the tobacco out of his cigarette and replacing it with weed. Which was genius; he’d only thought to roll something with the crumpled Mars Bars wrapper on the floor.

Daryl took the first hit like a pro. Even though he was a grown-ass dude, Glenn felt like he was back in high school, playing hooky with the bad kid, upping his cool factor at the expense of his GPA.

He sort of coughed when it was his turn with the spliff. And then it went out and Daryl had to help him light it again. Daryl didn’t say anything but he was pretty sure the man was laughing at him, in that silent-but-judging-you Daryl way. Spending time together, one-on-one, was a pretty recent thing. He’d been surprised when Daryl selected him for a run partner. After Rick bowed out, Michonne seemed like the logical choice. He asked Daryl why him and Daryl had said, straight-faced, “I hear you’re fast on your feet and know how to get in and out.” That brought all the blood to his face, full-on Asian glow, which had Daryl snickering again. “You _heard_ that?” he sputtered; he didn’t recall Daryl being anywhere in the vicinity when Maggie dropped that suggestive pick-up line back at the farm. Daryl shrugged, he heard everything.

“Shit, how will you drive home?” he said suddenly. Getting back to the prison had never crossed his mind til now.

“I can drive,” Daryl said. “Don’t bother me none.” He tossed the spliff butt away and rolled up the window.

“Are you sure?” Maggie would kill him if anything happened because they were too blazed off their asses to drive in a straight line.

“Yep,” said Daryl, starting the engine.

Glenn buckled his seatbelt. Off they went and Daryl’s driving wasn’t any different than usual – a little too fast but gentle on the breaks.

“I’m not feeling anything,” he said, after some time had passed. “Are you feeling anything?”

Daryl shrugged, eyes on the road.

“Maybe it was too old? Does that stuff, like, expire?” Suddenly hungry, he dug through his pockets for the Twix bar he’d stowed there earlier, and crammed one of the pieces in his mouth. “I mean, it was half tobacco anyway, right?”

“Roughly,” said Daryl.

“Maybe it was real grass,” he said. “Like off the front lawn.”

They sped past a walker, staggering along the side of the road.

“I bet that’s what happened,” he said. “Somebody mowed the lawn and put it in a bag and stuck the bag in the cookie jar so someone else would smoke it.”

“Uh huh,” said Daryl, maneuvering around a pothole.

Glenn stared out the window for a while. The sky was hazy with lots of fat puffy clouds. “Daryl,” he said presently. “I can’t feel my legs. And I think I might’ve peed myself.”

“What?” Daryl glanced over at his crotch. “Think you’re fine.”

“Are you sure?” Glenn shifted on the seat. “It feels tingly like I might’ve peed myself.”

“Don’t smell nuthin,” Daryl said.

But everything tingled and his legs weren’t sure they belonged to him anymore. The panic rose in his throat. If these weren’t his legs they would have to go back and get them because he couldn’t take care of Maggie if he had the wrong pair. He couldn’t feel them so he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t peed himself because it sort of felt like he had, and shit, he was gonna feel like such a dumbass when they got back to the prison and Maggie saw he’d lost his legs _and_ peed himself.

“Daryl, I really think –” he began.

“Jus’ relax,” Daryl said. “Think about them bunnies Beth found yesterday.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve had an accident here!” Glenn said desperately, feeling the sweat beginning to drip down his back. “Can you just check?” He grabbed Daryl’s hand off the wheel and thrust it down between his legs.

Then they _did_ almost go off the road. At the last second Daryl swerved left-handedly, all the while trying to reclaim his right hand, which Glenn was clutching against his junk.

“Jesus fuck, man, you aint pissed yourself!” Daryl bellowed, twisting madly. “Now leggo my fucken hand!”

“You’re sure I’m dry?” Glenn confirmed anxiously.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re dry, fuck –” Daryl snatched his hand back and cradled it protectively against his chest. 

Glenn let out the breath he was holding and slumped back into his seat. “Thank god,” he sighed. “I really thought I had there.”

“ _Fuck_ , Korea.” Over in the driver’s seat, Daryl was breathing like a winded bull. “ _Never_ stick my hand _anywhere_ near your dick again if you got half a mind ta keep it.”

“Fine.” Relief was washing over him, even if he still wasn’t quite sure about his legs. “Cos that privilege is reserved for Rick, right?”

“ _Watch it_ ,” Daryl snarled, but there was nothing he could do, he had to drive the damn car, so Glenn took advantage of his predicament.

“Rick put your hand on his dick at dinner yesterday, Maggie saw,” he said. “And then you went back to Rick’s cell even though David had bourbon. Nice bourbon. Knob Creek. Ever tried it?”

“I’ll kick your walker-bait ass back ta China,” Daryl grunted, white-knuckling the wheel.

“But I guess you and Rick were already up Knob Creek,” he reflected, shoving another piece of Twix in his mouth. “Did you guys schlob the knob all night?”

Daryl made no effort to avoid the next pothole; he sent them straight into it and they bounced so violently that Glenn’s head collided with the roof. Then he offered to cut off Glenn’s balls and how was Maggie gonna ride her fine oriental stallion then, if he was a gelding for the rest of his life?

“You’re a funny-ass dude, Daryl,” he told him. “A funny-ass dude.”

 


	9. Coma Girl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a prompt from MermaidSheenaz, who wondered about Daryl coming to terms with parenting Judith.

He had imagined dying so many times death was already a memory.

He died on the delivery table when the internist missed the cord wrapped round his neck. He died when his ma forgot to feed him, when he got dropped on his head, the first time his da broke the skin.

Every almost-death was catalogued with Dewey decimal precision. Reality was much swampier, engine grease and Bonnevilles, whiskey and rye, his da’s belt and a coating of angel dust. But he wasn’t a vicious cycle, he was the end of the line. So he had decided long before the dead starting coming back to life. It gave him a sort of peace, knowing the dirty bloodlines and old hatreds and like-father-like-sons were one last death away from disappearing forever.

 

xxx

 

Animal instinct, that’s all it was, when he took Rick’s newborn daughter in his arms and gave her the bottle. But she was an animal, too, an animal with her own instincts, and he’d forgot how it was with dogs and cats, how they best loved the one who fed them. The first bottle was his, and the second as well. Rick’s daughter fed ravenously. When she was passed along to Beth she started hollering something awful and Hershel thought maybe it was colic, but then they handed her back to him and she went docile as a lamb. Took another bottle, puked on his shirt, went to sleep.

He didn’t mind sitting up the night with her; he wouldn’t have slept anyway, too busy listening for Rick. Night came on and it was a rotation of Hershel and Maggie and Beth, each attempting to relieve him and the baby screaming herself blue til she was back with him, small enough to fit in the crook of one arm. Weren’t nuthin to worry about, he told their anxious faces, she’d adapt soon as her da was ready to take her. But Rick never came back from the tombs that night.

The first baby he’d ever held, but he didn’t mind her, honestly. She didn’t talk, for one thing. _He_ was the one moved to talk, pacing up and down the cellblock, calling her Lil Asskicker and humming under his breath, lewd drinking tunes and Beth’s hymns and half-recalled snippets of his own momma’s lullabies. He held her close upon his heart like he’d seen women do. There was a Cherokee legend he remembered, about a warrior who found a babe in the snow, and with nothing to feed her, he’d put her to his breast and somehow, miraculously, she had nursed. Luckily the Asskicker seemed happy with her formula cos that, _that_ woulda been damn peculiar, even in this world. But the story stayed with him and the strangeness seeped into his bones as he kept vigil over the baby’s every breath.

As the night wore on he stopped thinking it shoulda been Lori, it shoulda been Rick, it shoulda been fucken _Shane_ , or Hershel or Beth or Carol or anyone except him. In a funny way they’d chosen each other, him and Asskicker. Even if it was just animal instinct.

 

xxx

 

Thank god she was a girl.

The night passed like a fever dream and in the morning she was still breathing. If she’d been a boy he’da fucked her up somehow. Dixons mostly bred boys.

But a girl –

A girl was some kind of miracle.

He’d never had much to do with them, girls, and the Asskicker was like a tiny alien to him. She was pink and smiley when she wasn’t screaming, and when she screamed there was no malice in it. She just liked hollering. All she took was formula but she still pissed and shat like a champ and spattered his shirts with baby puke. After she came round to letting the others hold her, she was trusting as any other tiny animal and content to surrender her every need to an eager hive of caretakers. She didn’t look nuthin like Rick or Shane but she looked everything like Lori and Carl.

He couldn’t get used to folks saying _she likes you best_ cos he’d never been singled out for anything decent before.

Or maybe once, just once. _You wanna take Daryl as your wingman? Be my guest._ And Rick had said _thank you_ , and done just that.

 

xxx

 

Providing for the baby came natural cos that’s what he did, he provided for everyone, and the implications didn’t hit him til he was naked in Rick’s bed, arm gone to pins and needles under the man’s sleeping weight. Jude was with Carol tonight, but a half-finished cradle sat in the corner of Rick’s cell. After dinner he’d brought it over to get Rick’s approval for the project, and Rick’s eyes had gone funny in his face. Then Rick touched him like he hadn’t before, and after a lot of tussling and cursing they’d ended up naked in Rick’s bed and Rick tried it first and after a time he tried it too, and now he was wondering what he was doing naked in Rick’s bed with a half-finished cradle sitting in the corner.

What they’d done, they’d done wide-eyed and filthy and he ached and throbbed in new ways and the cell still smelled of sex. Which didn’t fucking square with the cradle sitting in the corner, unless it did and he’d just been blind all along.

The Asskicker was five months old then and growing her first tooth. He heard the wails echoing down the hall and he was up in a flash, hunting for his pants in the darkness.

Rick flung out an arm and caught him round the waist. “Where d’you think you’re going?” he said, voice rough with sleep.

“She’s cryin,” he said, swearing when he realized he had his leg through Rick’s jeans instead of his own.

“Carol’s got it,” Rick told him.

“’S that fucken tooth again,” he fretted. “Forgot ta tell Carol earlier, ya gotta rub a bit a brandy on her gums ta settle her.”

Rick tightened his arm, keeping him pinned to the bed. “She’s teethed a baby before, Daryl. She knows what she’s doing.”

“Yeah, but she aint teethed _Asskicker_ ,” he argued. “There’s a difference.”

The wails tapered off into a hiccuping whimper, and then the cell block was quiet again.

“See?” Rick said. “Judith’s fine.”

Reluctantly, he allowed himself to be tugged back down onto the mattress. Rick was solid and warm, rubbing his face between his shoulder blades. He squirmed but Rick held him fast by the hips, and so he sighed and turned over so they were facing each other in the dark. _What, Rick?_

_She sure got you whipped._

_Yeah, fuck off._

_Everything you’ve done for Judith –_

He shrugged. _’S nothing. It’s what we do._

“‘What we do’ doesn’t begin to cover what you’ve done for her,” Rick said aloud. Hands digging into his shoulders. “Thank god she’s got your Dixon stock.”

He flinched. “You’re wrong,” he said harshly. “She aint Dixon, her blood’s clean.”

“It’s what I want.” Rick wouldn’t let him pull away. “I want her to be yours. Hell, she already is. She’s gonna _live_ , Daryl. And it can’t just be me. You, too.”

“You don’t get it.” He was tired. Tired of touching, tired of this damn conversation. He wanted Rick to let go so he could slink back to his own cell. “I’m s’posed to be the end. The same sorry shit, man, time an’ time again. I die, it’s _over._ ”

“What’s over?”

“The, the _thing_ – Dixons, we’re born already in our fucken graves. Jus’ me left now, an’ I can put an end to it by dyin and finally _leavin be._ ”

“For such a smart man –” Rick broke off and sat up. “You’ve already done it, Daryl. You put an end to it. Months back. Maybe the first time you went looking for Sophia. It’s over.”

“You don’t know shit,” he said, but it was lacking conviction because Rick, _Rick_ had conviction enough for the both of them, and he made it so damn hard not to believe him when he was talking all stern and earnest with his eyes like steel.

Believing Rick meant crawling out of the family grave once and for all.

But –

But as the seconds ticked past and he and Rick stared at each other like a couple of wretched gibbons, so damn stubborn, the pair of them, he found a loophole. Maybe it was Michonne’s lawyer-mind rubbing off on him, that he’d cling to a stupid technicality like that, but cling he did.

Dixons mostly bred boys. Judith was a girl.

“For a girl, I could give it a shot,” he said.

 

xxx

 

Rick was happy, and he was glad, but he didn’t know what to do with unbridled joy, in Rick or in himself, so he leaned over and pinned Rick’s body under his. They wrestled and he bit Rick’s shoulder harder than he’d intended, and the animal sounds of their sweaty bodies slapping together filled the cell for the third time that night.

In the morning he finished the cradle. Sanded it down for splinters and left the paint drying in the sun. Then he took the Asskicker out of Beth’s arms and wandered down to join Rick in the garden. Carl was asleep with his hat tipped over his face, the lazy little shit, but Rick said he’d stayed up late reading and he was glad Carl had inherited Lori’s fondness for books. _Yeah, comic books_ he didn’t say, because Rick probably knew anyway, and who gave a shit about farming when the sun was out and the air was crisp and breathable.

Him and Rick, they sprawled on the grass, on their sides cos neither of them was putting any weight on their asses. Not touching, but comfortable. Jude was sleeping in the crook of Rick’s arm and Carl was snoring a few feet off. And even though it was as tranquil a scene as he’d ever known, somehow it was also like the first time he got on a motorcycle, riding that wave of excitement, let’s get this show on the fucken road.

Rick’s hand brushed against his knuckles. He felt an engine revving up inside of him, noisy as all hell and he was amazed it didn’t wake up the baby. But that girl, Asskicker, she could sleep through anything.

 


	10. No Reason/Let the Good Times Roll

It felt almost festive, sitting out there in the courtyard under a blazing sun and knowing Hershel was going to pull through. Hershel himself was resting in his cell, with Maggie, Beth and Carol on hand if he needed anything. Carl too, promising to stand guard, and Maggie had smiled and said she’d sure feel better if he did. Glenn and T-Dog had found a case of beer in the guards’ rec room, warm and flat and compulsively drinkable, so the three of them went to it, popping open their cans, toasting to Hershel in absentia, and feeling the earliest flushes of buzz.

A little distance away was Lori, her head tipped back to take in the sun, and beside her was Daryl. Daryl’s gruff solicitousness towards his neglected wife made Rick feel at once grateful and guilty. He watched Lori say something to Daryl and without hesitation he reached out and pressed his hand against her round belly. He was smiling, that shy boyish smile that took years off his face and made him look almost… Rick bit his lip.

Carol came out and told them Hershel was sleeping peacefully. She sat next to Lori and after a minute Daryl ambled over to join them. Rick tossed him a beer and dragged his attention back to the conversation he’d been tuning out. Music, that’s right, they were talking music.

“Elvis or Carl Perkins?” Glenn roped Daryl into the debate.

“Chuck Berry,” Daryl said, draining his beer and reaching for another. “What?” he said when Rick gaped at him. “Better guitar.”

“Now we’re talkin,” T-Dog said. “Just needed Dixon here to expand the framework of the discussion.”

“But over _Elvis_?” Glenn argued. “Elvis is like, in a league of his own. Forget technique, what does Chuck Berry have that Elvis –”

“’S obvious, aint it?” Daryl said. “Black man got the rhythm an’ the white man…” He raised his beer to Rick in a sardonic toast. “The white man got the law.”

T and Glenn laughed and Rick scowled, not really meaning it. His eyes drifted back to Lori. She wasn’t smiling anymore and Carol had an arm around her. He knew he oughta walk over there and ask her how she was feeling, with the baby due to arrive any day now, but… He just couldn’t. Didn’t want to, either. Not when he could sit with Glenn and T-Dog and especially Daryl and argue about things that didn’t matter.

“Ya know Sam Phillips?” Daryl was saying. “He said if he could find a white guy who could sing like a negro – _his words_ ,” he added emphatically, flapping a hand at T-Dog who just rolled his eyes and flipped him off. “He said if he could find a guy like that, he’d be a millionaire. An’ then he found Elvis an’ the dumbass sold him for thirty-five thousand bucks.”

They all laughed. “How d’you _know_ that?” Rick demanded.

“Just listenin to the radio.” Daryl shrugged. “Funny, the stuff you remember.”

“No shit,” T said. The three of them were loose, relaxed, even Daryl, but Rick could feel his stomach knotting up. He was imagining a baby with Shane’s brown eyes and full, toothy grin. He wondered if he’d be man enough to raise it anyway, or if he’d just let Daryl keep picking up his slack, saving food for Lori, feeling the baby kick, giving a damn when it mattered most.

The first time Daryl took him hunting last winter, he found himself wishing they could stay out there forever, just the two of them, and never go back to the group. Then he thought of Carl and felt a sick pang of guilt. He was losing his goddam mind. But it was a fantasy he revisited often over the long months that followed, now expanded to include his son, the three of them holed up in some tiny hunting cabin until the snow melted. He wouldn’t have to be the leader anymore and Daryl would teach them his language of hand signs and whistles so they need never talk out loud again.

T-Dog was singing that old standard _louie louie, me gotta go_ and Glenn was laughing at him, already half-drunk on weak beer. And then Rick felt Daryl’s fingertips against his knee, drumming out some rhythm he was hearing in his head. His breath hitched a little but there was no way Daryl was conscious of what he was doing. It was too comfortable, too familiar, too…

Daryl gave his knee a deliberate prod. “Ground control to Rick,” he said.

“Just thinking,” Rick said hastily.

Daryl’s eyes flicked over to where Lori was sitting and he nodded. His fingers resumed their tapping and under the stomping chorus of _louie louie_ Rick heard him singing something under his breath. He leaned closer.

_… let the good times roll_

_c’mon baby let em fill your soul_

He raised his eyebrows and Daryl offered him a crooked grin. “Don’t know too many happy songs,” he said. “Don’t reckon you do either.”

It struck him that Daryl was trying to cheer him up, shedding some of his trademark reserve to make him smile. The realization flooded his belly with warmth and though he still didn’t feel much like smiling, he pasted one on anyway to show Daryl he appreciated the effort.

_c’mon baby let the good times roll_

_roll all night long…_

Daryl was rasping it out like a latter-day Bob Dylan and Glenn and T-Dog stopped what they were doing to listen.

“Anyway –” Daryl broke off and lit a cigarette. Rick saw the tips of his ears redden where they were poking out from his hair. And he found he was grinning, a big stupid smile he couldn’t have forced off his face if he tried. He waited until Glenn and T had gone back to their conversation, and then he bumped Daryl’s shoulder gratefully with his own. Daryl shrugged and rolled his eyes, and Rick heard him as plain as if he was speaking out loud. _Gonna be okay._ Then Daryl tipped his head in Lori’s direction.

Rick sighed, nodded, and got to his feet, walking towards the woman he no longer cherished and away from the man he did.  


	11. Hateful

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is for maranhig (niroa), who inspired me to try something from Sasha's perspective.

“I always wanted to be rich,” she found herself telling him one night. He’d hardly spoken since Beth died, not that he was ever chatty back at the prison, and talking to him was almost like talking to yourself. “I mean, we were comfortable growing up, me and Ty, so when I was young it never crossed my mind. But then our parents sent me to private school, and it was like –  _oh,_ so that’s what money looks like.”

He grunted, staring into the campfire, but she thought he was listening.

“Suddenly it was all about having the right clothes, getting a fancy car on your sixteenth birthday,” she continued. “I was invited over to this one girl’s house, and there was like, a _maid_ who took my coat. The maid was black and that’s when I realized I was the only black girl in my class. I’d never given it much thought before, but all of a sudden, being black _and_ middle class seemed like the worst thing ever, you know?”

“Yeah,” Daryl said. “Mean, I was always the right kinda color – in the white part a town, anyways, an’ aint never been middle class, but I get ya.”

She hid her surprise that he was actually talking to her, and glanced around to see if anyone else had noticed. They hadn’t. They’d closed off a clearing with the vehicles, and now their group had scattered into smaller units for the night. Her brother was a few yards away with Carol and Noah. Grief hung heavy over all of them. The memory of Bob had set off an ache deep in her chest so she’d slung the Mossberg across her back and ventured over to the fire where Daryl was taking first watch. He was avoiding Rick and she was avoiding Ty, so he seemed like a good candidate to be miserable with.

“Never thought about black or white much, ta be honest,” Daryl said, prodding the embers with a stick. “We was so poor, aint nobody we could call ourselves better’n, though m’brother sure as hell tried.”

“That didn’t bother you?” she persisted, unwilling to let the conversation sputter out. Ty hated talking about this stuff, he called it disturbing the peace, said none of it mattered anymore, but she was sure it did, deep down, and if they ever got to D.C. they’d start dwelling on their differences all over again. “Being worse off than black folks?”

“Funny, actually,” he said. “Black kids usedta hit me up back in the day, ya know, ‘hey whiteboy, gotta dollar?’, even tried ta rob me once or twice. An’ it was like, ‘sorry brother, I’da picked my own pocket if I did.’”

That made her smile. The muscles in her face felt stiff. “I wanted to be rich _so badly_ ,” she said ruefully. “I thought it would make everything better, if we had a house on the beach and a maid to take people’s coats when they came in.”

“Always wanted a bicycle,” Daryl said. “So’s I could keep up with the other kids, wouldn’t hafta eat their dust all the time.”

“I was gonna make a shit ton of money when I grew up, so I could finally be as good as those dumb kids I went to school with,” she said. “Most of them are probably dead now, but I still imagine what it would be like.”

He was quiet for a long time, and she thought he might be done talking to her. His hair was long and unkempt, shielding his face. “Thought about it a lot,” he said at last, voice dropping even lower. “Even b’fore all this, figured I don’t wanna be rich. All them Cadillacs, all that dough, all the beach houses, all the servants ya want – aint nuthin at the end a that road. Don’t see the point gettin all rich an’ lockin yerself up in that mansion. Cos sooner or later, some motherfucker is gonna come round with a shotgun an’ blow your fucken head off or whatever.”

Abruptly, he cut himself off, and she knew he was seeing the same things she was – the tank, the guns, the Governor driving Michonne’s sword into Hershel’s neck.

“I guess none of it matters now,” she said, swallowing hard and blinking away the pictures in her head.

“Better off Rick’s way, all of us or none.”

“Maybe.” She shrugged.

“Gotta pretty good bullshit detector,” he said, looking at her for the first time. “An’ yer in the red, Sasha.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded, scanning his narrow face for clues and finding none.

“Maggie told me what happened, how you an’ Bob helped her find Glenn,” Daryl elaborated. “Talk about maids all ya want, but you’re bought inta the ‘one for all, all for one’ shit, same as the rest of us.”

“I tried not to,” she admitted, looking away because his eyes were too sharp with the firelight dancing in his pupils.

“But ya did,” he said, and that was it, she could see the change in his posture, the way the shutters came down behind his eyes. He was done talking to her, but she couldn’t resist one last question.

“Why don’t you go to Rick?” she said, knowing it was none of her business but tired of pretending. “He keeps looking at you. Bet he could cheer you up,” she added a little bitterly, remembering how Bob had made her laugh by finding the silver lining in _everything_ , no matter how ludicrous.

“Aint ready ta feel better just yet,” he said mulishly, glaring into the fire, and she felt a flutter of understanding.

“Me neither,” she said, and left him to it.

 


	12. Gunga Din

His dad and Daryl weren’t gross or anything, but they were still pretty obvious. How hands- _off_ they were in public was probably the biggest giveaway. Because every time they held back – from touching or kissing or whatever – just meant they’d be doing those things, and more, as soon as they were alone. It left a lot to the imagination.

He couldn’t have said who was more surprised, him or Daryl, the first time he walked into his dad’s cell just as Daryl was leaving. His dad had already told him about it, and he’d probably sort of known for even longer, but it was still weird to see the truth of it in the bruise on Daryl’s neck, in his sweaty hair and mis-buttoned shirt and red cheeks. And worse still a moment later, when he spotted a set of teeth marks on his dad’s shoulder before he’d pulled his shirt on properly.

Because his dad’s words had been so measured. _Me and Daryl, we’re something to each other. No, he’s not gonna replace Mom, and he doesn’t want to. Nothing’s gonna change, Carl._ And he trusted Daryl, probably loved him too by that point, so he’d just nodded and said _okay, great, now when can I learn to use the crossbow?_

But that conversation hadn’t prepared him for bruises and bite marks, for such obvious and sweaty proof that Daryl and his dad were _doing it._ He probably had Daryl to thank that he didn’t have to see more than he did. His dad could be kind of stupid, or at least careless, because he didn’t seem to realize how _scarring_ poorly stifled noises and inside-out trousers could be. But Daryl, at least, had blushed just as hard as him when they ran into each other that morning, and one night when he was passing his dad’s cell on the way to the bathroom, he heard Daryl’s ferocious whisper _dammit Rick, you gotta keep a lid on it else Carl’ll hear._

Which left him with some questions. Like what exactly they were doing and why they were so banged up afterwards. That part scared him, a little. His mom had sat him down for a version of The Talk after he’d learned she was pregnant with Judith, but it had been rushed and _so_ awkward and besides, Mom was a _girl_ , which meant her half of it didn’t even apply here.

As it turned out, _Daryl_ – clipped, surly and stingy with his words – was the better one to ask. Dad gave long complicated answers and sometimes used weird metaphors involving ocean tides and phases of the moon. Yeah, sure, like that explained _anything_. Daryl would get prickly and start trying to invent chores for him to do, but after you wore him down a bit he could be counted on for a direct, if testy, response.

“Why does my dad have marks all over his shoulder?”

“Cos I bit him there.”

“Why?”

Daryl was sharpening his hunting knife in the courtyard. He’d tried to send him off on an errand for Michonne but he didn’t budge so in the end Daryl tossed him a whetstone of his own and told him he might as well sharpen a few knives while he was being a pain in the ass.

“Cos I liked what he was doin,” Daryl said after a minute, the stone drawing a loud screech from his knife.

“And he did that to your neck cos he liked what _you_ were doing?”

“Yep,” Daryl said. “Reckon he did.”

“What _were_ you doing?”

“Yer a big kid, you can probly figure it out.” Daryl pulled out a cigarette, considered, and stuck it behind his ear for safekeeping. “Aint like we’re reinventin the wheel, me an’ your dad.”

He looked down at his feet, encased in their sturdy work boots. Daryl was good like that; he never told you what you wanted to hear ( _it was the pony what bit your dad, you must be imaginin stuff, kid_ ) but he was honest with you, even when it cost him. And he could see it costing Daryl now, in his ruddy cheeks and restless fingers. He’d noticed Daryl tried not to smoke around him or the other kids so he said, magnanimously, “You can smoke that if you want. I don’t mind.”

“Nah.” Daryl dipped his head. “Gotta ration em til the next run. Thanks, though.” That was another good thing about Daryl, he _got_ that Carl was trying to give him something in return.

He wondered what sort of dad Daryl might have been in the old world. Would they have gone see the latest Indiana Jones movie, or would they stay up late watching oldies on Turner Classic Movies? Daryl probably wouldn’t have played videogames with him on Sunday mornings like Shane used to. He’d drag them out of bed at first light to go hunting and they’d spend the day in the woods, shooting at squirrels and tracking a big buck deer for miles.

Which was exactly what Daryl did anyway.

He found it immeasurably reassuring. That world or this one, Daryl would be the same kind of person, the same kind of dad. There was something about him immutable like granite, while the rest of them were sandstone-soft, made unrecognizable to themselves and each other.  He’d always recognize Daryl, even if he woke up tomorrow back in his bed in King County, twelve years old again and never having killed a man.

About his own dad, he couldn’t say the same. But that, too, was okay, so long as Daryl was there to keep Dad on solid ground.

The _doing it_ part would take a little longer to get used to. He glanced over at the bruise blossoming maroon and violet on Daryl’s neck. _Gross._

 


	13. This Was Our Happy Ever After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a suggestion from MermaidSheenaz, who was interested in Daryl's changing feelings for Rick during the "Lost Winter."

The dizziness started around midday. But they were on the trail of a buck Daryl claimed was at least a four-pointer, so he shook his head to clear it and discreetly pressed a handful of snow to his burning forehead. He put his feet in Daryl’s tracks, one foot before the other, one step after another, doing his best to keep pace. When his meager breakfast came up with a heave and a shudder, Daryl was too far ahead to notice. Grateful for that at least, he washed his mouth out with snow and stumbled after. His throat began to ache. He was so intent on remaining upright and moving that he crashed straight into Daryl, who had evidently grown tired of waiting for him to catch up. Before he could apologize, his stomach lurched again and he couldn’t even stagger a dignified distance away to vomit, just dropped to his knees in a miserable bout of dry heaving. 

Daryl’s hands closed round his elbows and hauled him up. “Jesus Christ, Rick, why didn’t ya say sumthin?” Daryl said and suddenly there were two Daryls staring at him, concern in their narrow blue eyes. “Rick?” The Daryls said, and he blinked.

“The deer,” he tried to explain, and his voice was a hoarse rasp that felt like sandpaper against his throat.

“Fuck the deer,” said Daryl, and then there was just one of him again, still a bit blurry around the edges. “We gotta get you someplace warm.”

“Go back?” he said fuzzily.

“Too far. Lemme think, there’s gotta be sumthin round here…”

In the end Daryl told him to stay put while he had a look round, and Rick was only too happy to comply. He sank down against a maple tree. Daryl was stripping off his poncho and bundling him up in it, and his protest got lost in a wave of coughing. “Don’t fall asleep,” Daryl warned him. “Be right back.”

He began shivering violently, even with the added weight of the poncho still warm from Daryl’s body. Everyone had gotten sick this winter, everyone except him and Daryl so far, and while he was probably overdue for a nasty fever or cold, he couldn’t help feeling this one had come upon him with a particular vengeance. It was only the second time Daryl had taken him out hunting, on the heels of a nasty argument with Lori (what was it even about?). Carol had taken Lori’s part  and the two of them tore into him like a pair of harpies with their shrill voices and sharp elbows, and that was when Daryl had invited him to come along.

Daryl had let him air his frustrations for the better part of an hour, but after he spotted the deer’s tracks he told him to shut up and concentrate on moving quietly. A couple times he looked back over his shoulder and gave Rick a tiny nod, which meant he was doing well. He’d nodded back, stoic, but he drank in the praise and let it buoy him through the cold air. Except now his every limb felt like lead and he imagined that Lori had sent her wrath to follow him into the woods and lay him low and helpless before Daryl.

Daryl watched him all the time, and in the early, paranoid days of “this isn’t a democracy anymore” he thought the man was looking for his weak spots. But, as it turned out, every searching glance was followed by some small offering intended to ease his position. Sharing food with Lori and Carl, taking Rick hunting, joining him for the graveyard watch shift – he realized he’d dozed off and leapt up in a panic but Daryl was still there, beside him, watching the trees with his crossbow at the ready –

A hacking cough interrupted his thoughts. He fumbled for his weapon, convinced the sound came from across the clearing, but then it happened again and he realized he was the one making those awful noises. Then a shadow fell across him _Daryl_ he thought dimly _Daryl…_

It was warm now but he couldn’t stop shivering as the sweat ran down his face. The cough tore through him again and someone helped him sit up until the spasm passed. Then a cup of something was pressed to his mouth but he sealed his lips against it, afraid to swallow. It struck him that he might be dying. Burning hot as Jim back at the quarry, no antibiotics to bring the fever down. Wasn’t supposed to end like this. A walker bite, a mercy shot – that was the way of it nowadays, not drowning in a pool of your own sweat as your lungs filled with liquid. All wrong. Black spots dancing across his vision.

Then something cool against his forehead and one side of the world went dark. He struggled to breathe as slowly darkness covered up the other side as well. Sightless now, he stopped fighting and felt the heat of a leaping fire on his face. Hell? No, too literal, surely… His brain tried to summon Carl’s face, but the image flickered and dissolved. Underneath him, a wide plain of utter emptiness opened, cool at last. He sighed in relief. Trusting, he put his arms out into that emptiness. _Please…_ He reached as far as he could, farther than he thought possible, held his hands out until at last a bigger, work-toughened hand grasped hold of them.

With a yank, he was pulled across.

 

xxx

 

He changed the compress every few minutes, still holding Rick’s hand. Hadn’t known what else to do, when the man had reached out, so desperate and imploring. He caught Rick’s sweaty palm in his dry one. Never one to pray, but damn close to trying anyway. Then Rick collapsed on himself, limp as a boned fish, and _mother fuck_ he’d thought _he’s dead._ But after an initial plunge of horror he saw the telltale movements of his chest and soon Rick was cool to the touch. His fever had broken.

It was as if all Rick’s remaining strength had flowed into his hand, cos he was clutching Daryl’s fingers hard enough to make the bones creak. He’d needed a piss for the past hour and was desperately hungry, but all that could wait, as he watched Rick’s eyes shuttling back and forth beneath their lids and wondered what he was dreaming about.

He’d been lucky, something that was in short supply these days. Stumbled on one of the many little hunting cabins dotting the woods and hastened back to where he’d left Rick. Eyes glittering, a rattle in his chest every time he drew breath – Daryl half-carried him the quarter mile to the cabin, where he built up a fire and tried to make tea. Hoping he’d sweat it out. Watching helplessly as Rick coughed and shivered in the throes of his fever. At one point Rick started tossing and mumbling to himself, and that was when he looked down at his knife and prayed he wouldn’t have to but swore he would, if it came to that.

He didn’t have any illusions about what would happen if Rick died. The group would turn on each other, splinter and lose focus, and in days they’d all be dead. Well not him, probably, he’d do just fine on his own. Then he thought of Carol and even _Glenn_ and figured he was deluding himself. And if Rick died –

Rick’s breathing was slow and easy now, so he began to disentangle all the blankets he’d swaddled him in. They were soaked through. He dampened another cloth and dabbed tentatively at Rick’s chest. Three buttons, that was all he trusted himself to undo as he sponged the sweat from his face and neck.

His hand was shaking.

When Merle went through his revivalist phase, which coincided with his china white phase, he told Daryl the devil had appeared to him in the form of a beautiful woman whose tits ran with whiskey, and that was how ol Merle got his ticket straight to hell. He didn’t believe in that shit, told Merle so, but he had long begun to suspect that his own temptation wouldn’t assume the shape of a woman with whiskey nipples, it would look a lot more like…

_This_.

His stomach gave a sickening lurch. _Straight to hell, boy._ He could hardly look at Rick resting easy beside him, his brow smooth and unfurrowed for the first time in months. Mercifully oblivious. _Alright_ he told the empty cabin _do your worst._

Merle sauntered through the door. He looked much the same as the last time Daryl saw him, but his arm ended in a bloody stump.

_We-ell, look at youse. Aint interruptin nuthin, am I?_

Merle looked pointedly at their joined hands. Daryl shrugged.

_Raised ya ta be a man, baby bro_ Merle said _not a limpdick bleedin queer._

“Good one,” he told the apparition. “Real inventive.”

Merle brandished his stump threateningly. ’ _Member that kid down the block when we was growin up? Jerry sumthin?_

He shrugged again.

_Turns out he was some kinda faggot. Know what happened to him?_

“Know you’re gonna tell me.”

_Got jumped one night. An’ ya know what they did to him? Blew his brains out, little brother, blew his brains out with a pistol up his ass._

“Don’t be stupid, that aint true,” he said.

_Hate for that ta be you_ Merle said, but he was flickering in and out of focus. Daryl blinked and he was gone, _limpdick bleedin queer_ still echoing in the air. Pretty pathetic showing from Merle, all things considered, and he wasn’t any closer to dragging his hand from Rick’s and hightailing it outta there than he’d been five minutes ago. The awful sickness waned, taking up residence in the pit of his stomach, a tiny knot he could ignore most of the time. No, the feeling wasn’t near bad enough, there was a lightness to it, too, a certain warmth. A pleasurable twinge, like good tears. It would be the death of him, but he’d signed his life over to Rick long ago.

He swore that none of this would ever leave the hunting cabin. Tomorrow they’d rejoin the group and he’d find something for Lori to eat. Rick would come round to her again, he had to, for that baby’s sake if not hers, and he was damned if either of em was gonna starve to death before that happened. Tomorrow all this would be forgotten.

But tonight, he could let himself imagine. Holding Rick’s hand all these hours, it was the longest he’d ever touched anyone. Did funny things to his brain, contact. Made him think _alright, yeah, aint so bad, not when it’s Rick._ He didn’t know if he wanted those things Merle would accuse him of wanting, his mind couldn’t process that far yet. But he wanted _this._ Could imagine sitting beside Rick every night and holding his hand for a few minutes before they turned in. Not talking, they wouldn’t bother with that. Hands laced, maybe their shoulders would brush and their knees would bump, as they did sometimes anyway, and that would be enough.

The grip on his hand tightened and Rick opened his eyes.

“Daryl?” he said.


	14. Once in a Lifetime (Same As It Ever Was)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous requested virgin!daryl. Sorry it came out so short and shitty.

_All those years, out on the road…_

There hadn’t been anybody.

_A virgin? Really? That’s gotta be some kind of miracle._

No surprise Rick was glad to be the only one who’d touched him that way. No candyfloss girls or sticky-fingered boys to rear their heads in memory.

_Well, fuck._

Maggie and Glenn had one of their loudest fights the other day. Everyone else took refuge out in the courtyard but he’d been in the showers so he stumbled right into the eye of the storm. Glenn had asked Maggie how many guys she’d slept with him before him, and she’d apparently taken umbrage at the question cos when he walked in she was screaming _virginity is a social construct created by men_ “aint that right, Daryl?” she added, smooth as butter, and he couldn’t get outta there fast enough. 

_Why didn’t you say something?_

Never thought about it. Knew he hated being touched and knew one of Merle’s most basic needs was dormant in him. Dormant like one of those long-dead Hawaiian volcanoes, as it turned out, just waiting til it was good and ready to blow sky-high and take half the world with it. Didn’t matter, though, cos when the time came his body knew what to do, some ancient impulse taking over and guiding him inside Rick. And he paid close attention, he’d always been a quick study, so when things went the other way he was prepared, knew not to tense up and fight it. Happened naturally. So he hadn’t thought to tell Rick he’d never done it before, cos he didn’t remember his first drink of water, either.

_So that’s why you’re the only one who saw the chupacabra. Can you see unicorns too?_

He slugged Rick in the jaw then, bloodying his lip. Rick ran his tongue over the damage and winced delicately. He scowled and clenched his fists, hating Rick and hating himself more, because he never should have stayed in Rick’s cell that first time, and come back the following night and the night after. Wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Fucking. Or maybe it was, he’d be lying if he said he didn’t - … No, it was the talking that was stupid, putting a pin in the delicate private thing they had together and turning it into –

Rick managed to block his next punch and wrapped both arms round him. He was laughing, the bastard. “Daryl, you idiot,” he said. “Like I’d care if you’d fucked everyone from here to Decatur.”

He was still seething, he hated being teased. But Rick was dragging him deeper into the cell, mouth latching onto that place where his neck met his shoulder. Then Rick moved up to his ear and his head tipped back til it collided with the wall and Rick shoved a hand down the front of his jeans and what should have been a snarl came out instead as a low, breathy moan. Body giving him away. Goddamn it. So he rocked his hips into Rick’s fist and worked his hand under the other man’s jeans, determined to wipe that smug look off his face.

Afterwards they collapsed on the narrow bunk. He folded his arms behind and waited for Rick to fall asleep. But now Rick was all softness and affection, carding fingers through his shaggy, matted hair. His eyelids drooped but then Rick was crawling up his chest with a particular gleam in his eye. “ _Have_ you ever seen a unicorn?”

He could have thrown another punch but this time he kissed him, tongue and teeth and all, showing no mercy to the lip he’d bruised earlier. Rick hissed but opened his mouth for more; he never minded a bit of blood. 


	15. Lovers Rock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate Title: "Making Flippy Floppy"

**i.**

Rick woke slowly, like he was surfacing from a very deep lake, with a face tucked into his shoulder and a nose pressed against his skin. He moved away cautiously so as not to wake the man beside him. The cell faced east and the shadow of the barred window cast a pattern of stripes across the bed. He moved to sit up and immediately Daryl’s arm came around him in a tight, demanding grip like Judith held her rag doll – still very much asleep, and completely unyielding. Rick stroked his arm, the coiled muscle of his bicep and murmured that he was coming back. Daryl didn’t wake even then, but his arm loosened and he burrowed deeper into the pillow.

Rick crossed to the window. Dawn was just breaking. There had been a light frost overnight and the grass sparkled. Down the hill he could just make out his garden, where the fragile tomato plants were twined about the trellises he’d rigged up for them the previous day. He felt a pang off protective fretfulness at the sight, but the sun would soon melt the frost and his plants wouldn’t be any the worse.

Without warning a broad arm came around him. “Mmm,” Daryl said by way of greeting and Rick leaned back against him and closed his eyes, letting the sunlight and the crisp morning and most of all the warmth of Daryl’s body wash over him in a great wave of pleasure. Anticipation, too, knowing this was just the first of many mornings like it to come.

Daryl’s work-roughened hand slid down his side to grasp a fistful of his ass, and then another hand went between his legs. His fingers, already coated in something wet and slippery, were preternaturally adept and knowledgeable as they slipped inside him one by one. _You’re like Rain Man_ Rick had gasped out some hours previously, disbelieving that most of this was new to Daryl. Now he sighed and shifted his weight from foot to foot until, still holding him tight against his warm chest, Daryl entered him from behind. Rick clung to the window bars and rocked back against him.

Then his sweaty hand slipped and they tumbled down to the hard cement floor, landing in an undignified heap. Somehow Daryl managed to sort them out, putting his own back against the floor and urging Rick to clamber astride him so they could finish what they started. He began to move up and down, finding a rhythm and savoring the feel of Daryl’s powerful body beneath his. The vulnerable expanse of his throat when he tipped his head back, the blistering heat in his half-closed eyes.  

Sweat ran off his body, pooling in the hollow of Daryl’s sternum. They were moving so slowly, hardly more than a ripple across the surface of a lake, but the heat built up anyway until it was too much. They both came on an exhale, the sound of a shout swallowed into a sigh.

He heaved himself off Daryl and they crawled back into the bed, awash in the pleasure of being warm and naked together. It had an animal innocence to it, being with Daryl. Right now Daryl looked at once feline and lupine, with his narrow sated eyes and sleepy smile. Love made him radiant (even though that particular conversation was still months away) and Rick could feet the heat of it on his skin, all over.    


**ii.**

Daryl was the only one to hear the first distant rumble of thunder; it vibrated deep within his bones. The electricity in the air made his hair stand on end. So he disentangled his limbs from Rick’s and got out of bed. Pulled on his pants and slung a blanket round his shoulders. Then he slipped down the hall and stuck his head round the curtain two cells down.

Carl had the covers pulled over his head, but the yellow glow gave him away. “That aint the best use for emergency batteries,” Daryl said, just to see the kid jump. Carl yelped and fought his way out of a tangle of bedclothes, hastily switching off the flashlight and shoving the incriminating comic books under his pillow. “What?” he said rudely, and Daryl just raised an eyebrow til the kid grudgingly added, “Sorry about the batteries.”

Daryl nodded towards Judith’s cradle, resting beside the bed. “Big storm comin,” he said. “Want me ta take her?”

“How d’you _know_ that? Your freaky sixth sense again?” Kid was getting a damn mouth on him, but there was no missing the gentleness on his face as he looked down at his at his sister. “It’s okay. I’ll look after her, don’t worry.”

He nodded, duty dispensed with, and returned to his cell. Yanked the curtain shut and stripped down again, skin-to-skin was the only way to sleep with Rick. Just as he was pulling back the cover and bodily shoving Rick towards the wall to make room, the first clap of thunder broke right above them, deafening as a cannon shot. He heard several gasps of alarm from the cell block, and, sure enough, Judith’s thin, hiccupping wail. Then a second roll of thunder, louder than the first, and a flash of lightning bright as day.  
  
He waited, poised to shrug back into his clothes.

Lightning made him itchy. In the old days he would’ve wandered outside to take in the storm. Dare the lightning closer and closer. But life was different now, he had responsibilities. So he ground his teeth, forcing himself to stay put, and not look in on Asskicker neither. After a few minutes the crying trailed off and he sank onto the bed.

He looked over at the man beside him. Rick could sleep through anything. He was a shit bedmate, tossing and turning and kicking while he settled, but once he was out he was dead to the world.

So Daryl pinched the flesh of Rick’s thigh, none too gently, and brought him round with a few well-placed bites along the curve of his ass. Rick snarled and took a swing at him, which he dodged easily and pinned the man’s arms to his sides. “It’s stormin,” he said, nearly drowned out by another thunderclap. “Hurricane weather. Carl’s lookin after Asskicker.”

“So why’m I awake, then?”

“Pretty loud, all that rain an’ thunder.” Static electricity everywhere. “Wanna fuck?”

The lightning, it was making him crazy. Rick’s mouth was all over him, sucking at his earlobe, dragging teeth across his nipple. The pounding rain, some salty band playing a trombone refrain in the flickering dark. He rubbed against Rick like a cat. All riled up, it was playing tricks on his senses, the rain. The thunder, too, deceptive – you hear the shot but you don’t feel no pain, only the echo in your ears. He dragged Rick’s fingers into his mouth and sucked feverishly. _Easy_ Rick’s voice was in his head _slow down._ He sighed, unclenched his fists and uncurled his toes. He let Rick guide him back against the pillows. _Go on. Want you._ He opened his knees for the first finger, grunted at the feel of the second as his cock bobbed and twitched against his belly. _Rick…_ But Rick always dawdled when he wanted it fast, looking down at him with that eager boyish grin as he moved his fingers with agonizing slowness.

Inch by excruciating inch; he always liked a bit of burn, not that he’d ever forget it was Rick who was inside of him. There was never enough air to go round when they were fucking – gasping into each other’s mouths, kissing til they were blue in the face. He batted Rick’s hand away from his cock _too much, too much, I need_ – … But Rick knew exactly what he needed and picked up the pace, slamming into him as he raised his hips to meet Rick, thrust for thrust _c’mon, you bastard_ … A flash of lightning, and they stared into each other’s faces, wide-eyed (ghosts of electricity howlin in their bones, what Dylan sang) - …Then the thunder rolled through him and he shouted, the sound lost in the stormroar, and moved his hips in slow circles as he waited for Rick to catch up with him.

“God,” Rick said, flushed and sweaty, then: “Daryl.”

The sound of his name on Rick’s lips – so many times shouted in desperation when a herd was closing in, now murmured in the privacy of their twoness.

“Rick,” he said, voice rough and scratched. “Rick.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Per ananon's request, SOUNTRACKS:   
> Sunday Morning - The Velvet Underground  
> Visions of Johanna - Bob Dylan
> 
> My output is obviously slowing with the approach of fall, but please continue to toss out any prompts that strike your fancy and I'll get to them sooner or later!


	16. Death Is A Star

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a comment from krystal214, who wondered what Merle might have been thinking as he watched Daryl interact with everyone after they returned to the prison together.

You coulda hung Christmas baubles on them cheekbones, way they jutted out. Light him up like a tree. Rick’s people looking at him like he was the Christmas fairy hisself come ta town, so somebody’d probly do just that. Bit a tinsel, stick a halo on his head – he oughta look the part, little brother, seeing as how he was some big Savior and all. The teary-eyed reunions – sickening, was what it was. None a these folks’d give a rat’s ass about baby brother if he hadn’t saved Officer Friendly’s bacon, if he wasn’t their goddam meal ticket, mean squint-eyed proud-cheekboned sonuvabitch that he was. Would any a them lay down their lives for baby bro? Fat fucken chance. They put on a good show, alright, making out like they respected him, but he was still a freak to them, the dogshit they was just waiting to scrape off their heels soon as something better came along. But bro just stood there tolerating it, letting the mousey woman sniffle into his shoulder, clasping hands with the one-legged farmer, doling a rough one-armed hug to the sheriff’s brat dancing round him like a monkey. They forget he was dangerous? Bro was that deadly phantom stalking through the night shades with a gaze that could make a grown man cry like a girl. Weren’t nobody’s pet, always hated attention but here he was at the center of it, not doing a damn thing to extricate hisself. Then the cute lil blonde one came out with a baby, a baby, who’d a thunk, and brother took it like he’d been playing housewife all his life. Held the little thing in his arms while everyone cooed like it was the cutest damn thing they’d ever seen. Least that explained bro’s antics on the bridge, his faggoty ass had gone soft on Rick’s baby. Happy fucken family, weren’t they? Course the Chinese kid, he didn’t look too happy bout it, tried to stop his pretty lil girlfriend from hugging on little brother. Least somebody else was sour on the kumbayah bullshit. And where was Officer Friendly in all this, you might ask. Well Officer Friendly, he was staring at baby bro like the sun shone out his ass. Glassy-eyed and deranged. Cop was off his rocker and Daryl was an even bigger idiot if he couldn’t see it. Or maybe he didn’t care. Ten feet between baby bro and Friendly, and they was doing some kinda damn mating dance. Way baby moved, so smooth and sinuous. Sumthin in the hips. Friendly tilted his head one way and bro tipped his the other. Bro hadn’t changed his torn shirt, those were his purty pink nipples peeking out and it weren’t decent, not with the way the cop was looking at him. Oughta cover up some. Had his back covered though  _and whose fucking fault was that?_ and that had to be some kind of insurance, he’d never let Officer Friendly close enough to see that godawful minefield. Small mercy. Was gonna burn real bad when Friendly turned on him, sent him out like a sacrificial ark to take the bullet meant for his own sorry ass. And Daryl would go, take that bullet smilin cos that’s the kinda man he was. Baby bro with his high cheekbones and his pink nipples and his narrow cat eyes. An’ ol Merle on the other side of the bars, where he couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUNDTRACKS:
> 
> Death Is A Star - The Clash


	17. 16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MermaidSheenaz might recognize the fragment of a prompt.

Rick thought of them like string theory. An infinite set of Ricks and Daryls in a multiverse of parallel dimensions.  _Every me and every you, coming together like destiny._ A hall of mirrors from here to eternity.

“What d’you think, if we met in a world that hadn’t gone to shit –”

“Rick, don’t.”

Cos Rick’s was a fucked up cosmology and you could make yourself crazy thinking about it. Maybe those other guys, if they were out there, maybe they had longer lifespans. But he couldn’t imagine any other world where Rick Grimes would need Daryl Dixon. Take the old one, for example. Deputy Grimes would have little use for a crossbow-toting redneck; he’d slap him behind bars and go home to his wife, no fucks given.

Rick protested this characterization of himself. But there was no such thing as time or god or fate, no law binding them beyond the peculiar set of circumstances that brought them together at the end of _this_ world. Rick wasn’t afraid of death but he was plenty scared of annihilation. Him, the only thing that scared _him_ was the possibility of outliving Rick. Hell, when it looked like their number was up at Terminus, he was just relieved he’d go first so he wouldn’t have to watch Rick bleed out like a stuck pig. That’s what his last thought woulda been, not _oh well, maybe in the next universe over we’re having a swell time._

_Every me and every you…_

The day he hated Rick the most, Hershel married Glenn and Maggie. Just the original group of them, plus Michonne, gathered round in the field two days after Woodbury fell. Maggie wore a crown of flowers in her hair and Glenn had an apple blossom pinned to his jacket. It was cold enough to see your breath, little puffs of cloud every time someone exhaled. He’d never been to a wedding but this one felt a damn sight more like a funeral. Hershel was reading from his Bible but not any of the bits about love and marriage. Forsaking all others was probably beside the point when most everyone you knew was dead. And it sounded like death, valleys of shadows. The rod and the staff, they made his back twinge. _Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life._ Nearby, four little wooden crosses, but T-Dog was the only one actually down there. Never recovered Lori’s body, Andrea didn’t make it back from Woodbury, and Carol wasn’t dead. Woulda been decent if somebody had offered to put up another, but nobody had. What he’d said to Carol a long time ago – roses mighta bloomed for her little girl but he wasn’t fool enough to think any grew for his brother – held true for grave markers too. Not everybody got to be remembered. Rick as good as killed his brother. All the Governor had to do was pull the trigger.

That should have been the end for them, the parting of the ways, but somehow it wasn’t. _I’d have razed Woodbury to the ground to get you back_ Rick said _killed every last person there if that’s what it took._

 _The same goes for this place_ Rick told him more than a year later in Alexandria. _If anything happened to you…_ And this time, after Joe, after Terminus, after Gareth and Grady Memorial and Pete Anderson, he believed Rick. Not without trepidation. _If death comes so cheap, then the same goes for life. So go on then, Rick, you can be a hero in an age of none._

It was a damn waste of bullets, he thought, standing under the harsh glare of the sun in the town square. Whupping the Alexandrians into shape was one thing, they had to learn to how to fight, but this wasn’t the fucking Olympics. He thought Rick was stupid for letting the shooting lesson devolve into a pissing contest. _Marksmanship competition, my ass_. But then he looked round and realized they had an audience, almost the whole town was there, even a shrunken Deanna in her widow’s weeds. And then he did a headcount and realized it was only Abraham, Sasha, Glenn, Rick and him left in the running. Michonne had watch or she probably woulda been there too. Rick’s people, every last one of them. So he had to concede that Rick was pretty damn smart, actually. He was transmitting a clear message to the assembled Alexandrians, _you aint got a chance against us, so you better fall into line._

It was still a damn waste of bullets, though.

Glenn went down next. He looked disappointed, but Maggie went to console him, whispering something in his ear, and suddenly he looked a lot happier. No doubt about it, Chinaboy was gonna get a nice consolation prize tonight. Then Abraham hit the target just wide of center, and _that_ he could gloat over. Army guys, they were used to automatic weapons and a spray of lead, didn’t know how to make every individual shot count.

That left Sasha and Rick and him. Personally, he was rooting for Sasha; the woman was a fucking deadly sniper and he wanted the chance to shoot against her, one-on-one. He wasn’t above a bit of sabotage, either, so he drifted close while Rick was taking aim. “Winner gets ta call it tonight,” he whispered.

Rick whipped round like a dog that had scented a rabbit. “That mean you’re coming back to our bed?” he said in an undertone, all hungry-eyed. They’d argued the previous night, him and Rick, and he, Daryl, had stomped off to sleep on the porch. He had a pretty short fuse these days. And with every fight, he would flash back to the wedding and the moment when he hated Rick the most and the blood would roar in his ears. So much for all the goodness and mercy that was sposed to follow him.

“Yep,” he told Rick, and stepped back.

Rick adjusted his stance and raised his Python again. Took an inordinate amount of time sighting the target. Now the bastard _really_ wanted to win, fuck knew which way he wanted to screw tonight.

“C’mon, Tommy Gun,” he taunted Rick loudly, making the onlookers laugh and cheer. “I’m gonna whittle you inta kindling.”

Rick fired and it was a bull’s eye, of course it was. Maggie went down to check the target, and when she came back she said Sasha’s shot was a hair closer. Which left the two of them, just as he wanted.

He outshot her in the end, but damn, she made him work for it. The sweat was beading along his hairline and his shirt was glued to his back. “You oughta join the Wild West Show, Annie Oakley,” he told her, patting her shoulder cautiously; Sasha was brittle as matchsticks these days and it didn’t take nothing to set her off. She gave him a faint smile, though, and said, “At least I don’t have to worry about you letting me win.”

“That’ll be the day, yeah.”

Rick was good and pissed when he got back to the house, watching with his arms folded while he peeled off his vest and sweat-soaked shirt. “You made me look bad out there, Daryl.” 

“You sayin I shoulda let ya win, Officer?” He wanted to get a clean shirt from the dresser, but to do so he’d have to turn around. The sight of his ugly naked back always made Rick feel guilty, made him abandon whatever fight they were having. And if Rick wanted to have it out, it was best they got it over with now before it festered. So he stayed put, the sweat drying on his exposed skin.

“These people need to respect my authority,” Rick said, steely-voiced. “Can’t have you showing me up every chance you get.”

“Every chance I get?” he snorted and folded his arms too. “Now yer bein stupid.”

“I’m serious,” Rick said, loosening his constable tie. “It’s a security issue.”

“Aint,” he disagreed. “I shoot better’n you, so what? Hershel explained it ta me that first winter, when I couldn’t fer the life of me figure out why ya trusted me, chose me, like ya did.”

“What’d Hershel say?” Rick’s face softened a little. 

“He said you’re the strongest you’ll ever be, when the most dangerous guy in the group is behind you an’ don’t got any interest in takin yer place.”

“The most dangerous, huh?” The fight was draining out of Rick; but for the uniform and the smooth jaw he could’ve been the old Rick back at the prison.

“Yeah, but you’re the craziest,” he said. “Look, if they’re afraid of me, they’re afraid of you, simple as that. We come as a package, you’n me. One’n the same.”

“Daryl…” Rick stepped into his space and it was so easy, not even the faintest flutter of panic anymore. “I love you.”

His throat was dry. “Love ya too.”

Rick brought their foreheads together and they rested like that for a bit. Just breathing each other in. Rick smelled unnervingly like aftershave, but beneath that was his familiar scent of fresh earth and good honest sweat.

Was it like this for all the other Ricks and Daryls, if they were out there? In the other dimensions, did they come together with such ease and inevitability? Somehow, he didn’t think so. Him and Rick, they were a singularity. An interruption in space-time. _Take your string theories and stick em where the sun don’t shine._

Methodically, he stripped Rick of his uniform – christ he hated that thing – and looked him over.

“Well, you won,” Rick said. “What’re you gonna do with me?”

He considered, tilting his head to the side and admiring Rick’s trim waist, his hard ass. He could be a kinky fucker when he wanted to – _I’m gonna whittle you inta kindling_ – but that wasn’t so much, not anymore. Now he just wanted –…

“Hate that we fight so much,” he said after, pulling Rick’s head down to rest on his shoulder. “Didn’t used to be like this.” He’d come to cherish the quiet moments after they fucked. Just about the only ones they had left, it seemed like, before someone’s temper spiked and they were back to circling each other like dogs.

“It doesn’t change anything,” Rick stipulated, threading fingers through his and holding tight. “It’s not us, it’s this place, it’s everything else that’s fucked up.” 

_What d’you think, if we met in a world that hadn’t gone to shit –_

_Rick, don’t._

“It’s always gonna be fucked up,” he said, slotting his leg between Rick’s to show this wasn’t an argument; it was just lovers’ talk. “No matter where we are.”

“But so long as I love you, and you love me –”

 _Love aint enough._ But Rick was stiffening in his arms so he added quickly, out loud, “But we still gotta try harder. Don’t like fightin, Rick, don’t like pissin contests. Them’s the rod an’ staff I grew up with, an’ I –”

“Daryl Dixon,” Rick said, warm breath fanning across his neck, “did you just quote Scripture at me?”

“Did I?” he pulled a face. “Jus’ sumthin I heard Hershel say once. Anyway… ’S bad for the kids ta see us goin at it, dontcha reckon? Carl’n Asskicker… Gotta try harder for them, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Rick agreed heavily. “Yeah, you’re right, we gotta.”

“We aint gonna grow old together, you an’ me. Not in this world.” He paused to deliver the punchline, cos he did have one, but Rick had inhaled sharply and was gripping his hand hard enough to make the bones creak. The man looked fucking devastated and suddenly his own throat felt tight – he hadn’t meant it like that, but it was true and they both knew it. No wonder Rick spent so much time thinking about _every me and every you_ , those other Ricks and Daryls, if they were out there. “So there’s some shit you gotta learn quick,” he continued roughly, bulldozing past the lump in his throat. “Like how you aint never gonna outshoot me. An’ how I aint never gonna let you win. So don’t come draggin your wounded pride round here, kay Officer?”

“Yeah, whatever,” Rick said, and rolled on top of him. Pinning his arms gently over his head, sucking at a tender spot on his neck. He closed his eyes and gave over to the feeling of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUNDTRACK  
> 16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought Six - Tom Waits
> 
>  
> 
> We are SO close to Season 6.


	18. Younger Us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another riff on the same prompt from previous chapter.
> 
> Minor spoilers for 6.01. 
> 
> Takes place after Rick describes his plan for dealing with the walkers. 
> 
> I hope it isn't too hard to follow. Dialogue alternates, Rick-Daryl etc.

\- Leave off, man, we gotta be up early. Build that damn wall.

\- Won’t sleep, I’m too keyed up. And so are you, I can tell.

\- Oughta try anyway. Long day ahead.

\- I can’t shut my brain off. Deanna, Carter, Ron - … Should’ve asked before I said you’d lead em out. The walkers. I –

\- Don’t be stupid. ’S what I’m here for, enit? Be fine.

\- I know you will. I just –. Can’t rely on these people. Can’t stop thinking. Need to go someplace else with you.

\- Never liked playin pretend.

\- Then humor me, c’mon. Everyone else is asleep. Look at Judith, she’s out cold.

\- Not fer long, if ya don’t quit talkin so loud. How many times I gotta remind you bout the acoustics in here?

\- Acoustics. _Jesus_. It’s a house, Daryl.

\- Yeah, an’ it echoes like a cathedral. Got Morgan next door now, too.

\- Okay, okay… How bout high school.

\- Never finished high school. You know that.

\- Doesn’t matter. We’re just imagining, alright? Let’s say we’re seniors in high school and – d’you wanna be the new student, or should I?

\- Don’t give a –

\- Fine, I’ll be the new student, I’m the new student at your high school. My dad lost his job and we have to move to the next town over so he can get another one. I’m real pissed off, cos I had to leave all my friends and quit my position on the baseball team. I was gonna be captain. So when I show up at – quit yawning!

\- This is boring as fuck, Grimes. Why dontcha tell it ta Asskicker instead?

\- I’m just establishing some background. Play along, won’t you. 

\- Fine. Second I lay eyes on you, I hate yer fuckin guts. All rich an’ pampered, never gone hungry a day in yer life. Parents thinkin the sun shines outta yer asshole. Yeah, I hate you, alright.

\- See, I knew you’d get into the spirit of it. Anyway, you’re the resident bad boy, everybody’s afraid of you cos you smoke cigarettes and ride a motorcycle to school. And you’re mysterious. Nobody knows a damn thing about you. And you’re always in detention –

\- Aw, Christ. Believe it or not, asshole, I wasn’t shit at everything back in the day.

\- This is just a story. We’re making it up.

\- Whatever, man.

\- Like I was saying, you’re always in detention. And that’s where we meet. I’m new, I don’t know my way around, I’m late for class. They put me in detention and there’s only one seat left, next to you. So that’s where I sit. You smell like cigarettes and gasoline. I introduce myself, and you glare at me – yeah, just like you’re doin now – and you don’t say anything back. Well, I keep trying to talk to you, cos I’m a good guy – _ouch!_ – but then the teacher gets pissed and sends us to the principal’s office. We get chewed out real good there, and –

\- An’ when we get outside I knock you on your ass fer bein such a pain in mine.

\- But then I’m such a good sport about it you feel bad, so you offer me a ride on your motorcycle.

\- Hell no I don’t. I drive off on my bike, this real sweet Triumph 66, I restored her myself an’ she rides like a dream… Annyway, I drive off an’ leave you standin there with yer mouth hangin open.

\- Next day I take the seat beside you in history class, like nothing happened. History’s my worst subject, but you got a knack for it.

\- Did, though. 

\- I know.

\- How’s that?

\- I hear you teaching Carl sometimes. Nat Turner, Crazy Horse, stuff like that… Yeah, so in history class the teacher calls on me and I don’t know the answer. But then I hear you mumble it under your breath, like you’re not really conscious of it. So I repeat what you said, and it’s right. That’s how we become friends.

\- Slow down, cowboy, I aint takin to ya that easy. You gotta do sumthin fer me first.

\- Like what?

\- I dunno, wanna suck my dick?

\- You’re not taking this serious, you bastard.

\- Am so. Was a serious question. Wanna suck my dick?

\- Fuck you, we aint there yet. How bout one day your bike breaks down, so you gotta walk home from school. It’s raining. I’m driving past and I see you, soaked to the skin, so I offer you a ride back to your place.

\- We don’t go ta my place. Never.

\- But this is just a - … Sure. We go back to my place, then.

\- An’ yer house is full of all this _stuff_ , aint it? Like you got a color TV an’ a matchin china set an’ all the rooms smell like Lily of the fucken Valley. Photos on the walls. An’ I act like I hate it but really I’m just fucken jealous.

\- Daryl…

\- What?

\- Nothing, I just - … Yeah. Anyway. You’re wet and shivering so I offer to lend you some dry things –

\- Bet I can see where this is going.

\- No! We gotta make friends first. You put on dry clothes and we spend the afternoon together. Then my mom invites you to stay for dinner. You put up a fight, but in the end you cave, cos it smells real good. We all sit down together, and my mom comes out with –

\- Shit, never mind. Can’t stand listenin ta you bastards whine bout all the fancy food ya miss. So what then? I go home after –

\- But you come back, the next day and the next and the day after that.

\- What about Shane? Bet he aint too happy with this arrangement.

\- He’s not in this story. Neither’s Lori.

\- Oh.

\- By now we’re spending practically all our time together, you and me.

\- I got my crossbow an’ I try an’ teach ya how ta hunt out in the woods, but you’re shit at it. Make too much noise, scare off all the game.

\- This is make-believe. Maybe I’m really good at it.

\- Nah, you’re shit.

\- Fine, I’m shit. So we’re all alone in the woods, you and me…

\- Uh huh…

\- And that’s how it happens. Not like anybody’d planned it. Just sort of natural.

\- We rough?

\- I don’t think so. We’re just kids, remember. Seventeen. It’s kind of awkward, probably, cos I’ve never kissed a guy before and we’re both trying to take the lead. So we knock our teeth a few times and at first it’s weird, feeling somebody else’s stubble on my face. But I like it. And you must, too, cos we keep kissing.

\- Then we do it, huh?

\- We’re _seventeen_ , Daryl. We’re kids. We go slow. One thing at a time. Just kissing, and maybe some touching outside our clothes. I can feel your heart pounding. You’re a real good kisser.

\- Sure.

\- No, you are. Best kiss I ever had. 

\- But you still won’t suck me off.

\- Not today. But we kiss some more, and after I go home I lie on my bed and wonder what we are now – if we’re friends, or if we’re something more –

\- I aint yer boyfriend.

\- …

\- So that’s probly our first fight, aint it? You wanna be my boyfriend, hold my hand at school, all that shit – … Pass the water, will ya? … Right, so then we have some stupid fight, an’ you start blubberin-

\- I fucking don’t. I _don’t._

\- …

\- Fine, have it your way. But then we make up. We go back to my house; it’s empty, both my parents are out. So we go up to my room and you start kissing me, nice and sweet. Cos that’s the only way you ever say you’re sorry. You start kissing me, and I kiss you back. Can’t stay mad, can’t keep my fucking hands offa you. And this time we keep going, further than before. You get that look on your face, like… And then I panic: I haven’t got any condoms. But it’s okay, because it’s our first time, and –

\- Nuh uh. Not me. Merle took me to a whore, day I turned fifteen.

\- What?

\- Wanted me popped early, said I wouldn’t get it done otherwise.

\- But, but this is just pretend, doesn’t have to be the way it was. Can be however you want, you don’t have to be _you._

\- Don’t know any other way ta be.

 

 

\- This was a stupid idea. Let’s just forget it, okay?

\- Whatever, Rick.

\- We should probably get some sleep, like you said. I’ll hit the light, okay? … Here, take some more blanket, it’s all on my side.

 

 

\- Did he really. Do that? Merle, I mean.

\- Yeah, he did.

\- Christ, I didn’t –

\- Don’t matter.

\- Daryl –...

\- Don’t wanna –. Forget it. Just forget it.

\- Is that why you –

\- No. Dunno. Leave be, Rick. Don’t matter, it’s… Got you now, don’t I?

\- Yeah, you do. But shouldn’t we –

\- ’S all there is. You’n me.

\- We got each other. I _need_ you. More than ever, I…

\- …

\- Hey, what’re you - …

\- …

\- Jesus. Fuck. Daryl…

\- …

\- Yeah, there. _There._ Ah, fuck

\- …

\- _Fuck._ Daryl. Daryl

\- Keep it down, will ya?

\- _Sorry_ –

\- Or at least shout somethin that aint my name

\- …

\- …

\- C’mon, yeah, that’s 

\- …

\- Faster, _please_ Daryl, I need

\- I got you, Rick, shhh

\- Oh fuck, Daryl, I’m gonna – …

 

 

\- You’re always so quiet.

\- Just cos I aint shoutin don’t mean

\- I know. I know.

\- …

\- You _bit_ me. See that bruise, right there? Gonna be purple in the morning.

\- Sorry

\- No you’re not.

\- Yeah, not really.

\- Still marking your territory, huh?

\- Sumthin like that. Don’t like sharing us. Even if it’s with _us,_ y’know, _younger_.

\- It was stupid. No more games.

\- …

\- Though if we were younger, we could probably have sex again, right now.

\- Uh huh

\- Jesus, how d’you _do_ that?

\- Don’t jerk it as much as you. S’fine, though, I can wait. Sleep when we’re dead, I guess.

\- Mm. Daryl?

\- …

\- I think you’re the only person in this whole town who doesn’t play some kind of pretend. All of them, acting like the world doesn’t exist beyond the walls, as if there’s nothing just _waiting_ for us to let our guard down… Carol’s playing her game, Maggie… But what are we _doing_ , any of us? Keeping this place safe, like we really got a chance to make it _home_ … You’re the only one who aint pretending.

\- Nah. Think we got a chance.

\- You pretending?

\- Pretend plenty, I guess.

\- What d’you 

\- I like pretendin this feeling aint never gonna end. You’n me here, tonight. Stupid, right?

\- No. It’s the same for me. Us in the bed, Judith there, Carl next door. Some nights, I wish they’d go on forever, never see the sun again.

\- …

\- …

\- … fuck it. C’mere, Rick. Like that. I got you. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUNDTRACK
> 
> Younger Us - Japandroids


	19. Honey On My Hard Luck Soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happier days, for niroa (maranhig).

“Smoke?”

Bob jumped, he was still jumpy as hell. They had him cleaning rain barrels because he was still too new for fence duty or supply runs. Bent over his task, scrub brush in hand, he hadn’t heard anyone approach. Army training was getting rusty. He straightened slowly and turned.

Daryl Dixon, the man who picked him off the road and brought him here. He relaxed a little. “Thanks.”

Daryl proffered the carton and Bob took a cigarette, just managing to catch the lighter tossed his way. He inhaled deeply and his eyes fluttered shut. It had been months, he couldn’t remember the last time. “Nice,” he said.

Daryl nodded at him and turned to leave.

“Wait, hang on.” The words slipped out inadvertently. When Daryl faced him again, he realized he didn’t have anything to say. He just didn’t want him to leave. Bob felt for Daryl the same potent mix of loyalty and gratitude that he’d reserved for his sergeant back in the army. Like he’d follow him anywhere. Which was stupid, because Daryl hadn’t asked anything of him, just brought him back here like he’d done with countless others. Hell, the man hardly said a damn word.

“’Sup?”

One word. He didn’t sound pissed but maybe a little impatient.

“Uhh…” Bob cast about. The closest thing he could compare Daryl to was a Ranger or maybe a Green Beret. But the guy was too much of a loner, it was hard to imagine him taking orders from anybody. He heard the kids speculating sometimes, about what Daryl might have done and who he might have been before the turn. Never got it right, though; Dixon just snorted and told them to get back to work. “Uhh…” Man had damn uncanny eyes. Too bright, too blue, they got under your skin. “Who’s that?” He pointed at random, indicating one of the women walking back from fence duty.

“Sasha,” Daryl said.

“ _Sasha_ ,” he repeated. Damn if she wasn’t beautiful, all slender and lithe with her hair pinned up. He grinned.

“Yeah, an’ that’s Tyreese,” Daryl pointed out the hulking man walking beside Sasha. “Her brother.”

Bob quailed some. Tyreese looked like he could snap his neck with one of those huge bear-paws, and Daryl smirked.  “Bark’s worse’n his bite. Usually.”

He didn’t notice Daryl evaporate this time. When Sasha walked past he waved. She gave him a bemused look, but waved back.

 

xxx

 

Man if that little Greene girl didn’t sing the saddest songs sometimes. Sometimes folks gathered in the evenings, mostly the original group that took the prison but sometimes a few others, and one night Daryl gruffly informed him there was gonna be mulled cider, if he wanted to join. Well, the alcohol was stretched so thin you could hardly taste it, but he didn’t mind cos the cider was hot and the candlelight was warm and everyone smiled at him like he belonged there.

_She_ was there, Sasha, sitting with her brother and that young married couple, Maggie and Glenn. Talking animatedly, too wrapped up in the conversation to catch his eye. He didn’t have enough liquor in his veins to crash that party yet, so he cast about for someone to talk to. Daryl, who was looking cleaner than usual, nodded at him from across the room. But before he could make his way over, Rick Grimes had put his hand on Daryl’s arm, and Daryl turned his head to listen. Rick was a strange man, he used to be in charge of all these people but now he worked in the garden. Didn’t make a lick of sense, but there was still an air of authority about him. Something in the eyes, maybe.

Rick had his daughter, Judith, and he was trying to bounce her to the music, but Beth wasn’t giving him much to work with. “Blackbird” practically dripping with tears, kind of a buzzkill.

He leaned against the wall, glass in hand. They were good people, these folks. Kind, but not stupid, always keeping a weather eye out. And he wanted to do well; this was the first drop of liquor he’d tasted since he arrived. He didn’t want Daryl thinking he’d made a mistake, bringing him back here.

Beth Greene’s song was making him feel funny. Itchy in the throat. It used to be on the radio all the time, this one, but the Beach Boys sang it like they were at a party, not a funeral.

_Do you wanna dance and hold my hand_  
_Tell me baby, you’re my lover man  
_ _Oh baby, do you wanna dance?_

He used to dance with pretty girls in the clubs, bring them home sometimes. Compare notes with his army buddies the next day. God he missed it. The army, the girls, the perfume left on his pillow in the morning. He glanced over at Sasha; she and the others had fallen silent to listen. Her head was bowed and he wondered what she was thinking about, if she was remembering anybody.

_Do you wanna dance under the moonlight_  
_Hold me baby all through the night  
_ _Oh baby, do you wanna dance?_

He couldn’t look at Sasha anymore so he watched Rick Grimes hand his daughter over to Daryl. Cute little thing, she giggled and crowed as Daryl cuddled her up to his chest. But Rick didn’t quite let go of her, and suddenly it was like they were holding her together. Cradled between them. Daryl didn’t edge away, like he seemed to do when most people got too close, but swayed forward. Then Bob saw Rick’s hand brush fleetingly across Daryl’s hip and he looked away, blushing. It was a private moment, one he had no business intruding on. Just a flicker of curiosity, a bit of wistfulness. Were they…?

_Oh baby, do you wanna dance_

He swallowed hard. Then he crossed the room and sat down next to Sasha. “We haven’t been introduced,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Bob.”

 

xxx

 

Then one night he had watch and suddenly walkers were piling up against the south fence. It began to buckle under their weight. In a panic he raced back to the cell block, shouting Daryl’s name, and then Daryl was stumbling out of Rick’s cell, shirt open, belt unfastened, and running flat out for the fence.

They shored it up and the fence held, but Daryl was kind of funny with him for a few days after. Bob wanted to tell him he didn’t care, that he’d known since the cider party, but Daryl was practically breathing smoke like an irate dragon. So he let it go, and soon Daryl did too.

He’d seen it before, army guys bunking off when they got too lonely. Redeployment, the second surge – morale was low, and sometimes a man needed a little human comfort. But this didn’t seem like foxhole blues. Plenty of women around, for one thing. (Didn’t look like Sasha had a boyfriend, so far as he could tell.) No, it must’ve been a different kind of necessity that drew them together. Nobody fucked with Daryl Dixon, but Grimes seemed to have a special way with him. And as for Rick’s daughter – well, the Big Bad Wolf sure lowered his hackles for that Little Asskicker.   

Bob probably dwelled on it more than was decent, but Daryl was his sergeant, and a good soldier always knew what made his CO tick. He had trouble sleeping some nights – bad dreams, the odd hankering for a drink – and took to pacing the block. One night, it had to be near dawn, he was tracing his usual route and he spotted Daryl silently letting himself out of Rick’s cell. Their eyes met; it was too dark to see Dixon’s expression but he jerked his chin toward the door and Bob followed, heavy with dread.

“Smoke?”

Shivering in the predawn chill, Bob looked at him askance, but reached for the pack with numb fingers. “Thanks.” Then, mustering his courage: “Hey, Daryl –”

“Feel like goin on a run?”

“Huh?” He almost dropped the cigarette.

“Winter supplies. Reckon you’re up for it?”

“Yeah. _Yeah_ ,” he said eagerly. He’d never been invited on a run before, he must’ve earned his place if Daryl was asking him along.

“Be leavin in twenty,” Daryl said. “Get your gear.”

Then it occurred to Bob that maybe Daryl was planning to leave his mangled corpse in a ditch for twice seeing what he had no business seeing. “Er… how many of us are going?” he asked.

“Jus’ three.” Daryl exhaled a stream of smoke.

“Three?”

“Yeah. You, me…” Daryl’s narrow, wolfish face cracked into something almost like a smile. “… an’ Sasha.”

Bob’s mouth fell open and a startled chuckle escaped him. Across the courtyard, the door swung open and there was Sasha, striding towards them with a rifle across her back. He stared like a tongue-tied idiot, hardly able to believe his luck.

“Let’s move,” Daryl said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUNDTRACKS
> 
> Do You Wanna Dance - The Beach Boys  
> Corinna - Taj Mahal


	20. Black Sheep Boy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> super super short.

“What was he like?” he’d asked Merle, a note of wistfulness creeping into his voice. Knowing it was stupid. Knowing it was dangerous to show a man like Merle your soft underbelly. Knowing Daryl (what little he _did_ know of Daryl) there was little point asking. For Daryl, there had never been any _before_ , when the living was easy and he had the wind at his back. It was always _after_. Maybe he’d just been born too late, born into _after_. Because Merle, he was loud and rude and put his hands all over people whether they wanted him to or not. Merle was a man with a _before_ , even if he was well into his _after_ now, with a missing hand and a death-wish glinting in his eye.

Rick didn’t know why he was so fixated on it, this fool’s hope that once there had been something else for Daryl, something that wasn’t… this.

“Whatchoo askin for?” Merle slurred, his face slack with whatever pills or powder he’d excavated from his mattress. It lay butchered in the middle of the cell, his mattress, a gaping wound spilling foam across the floor. “Psycholologize him all ya want, Officer Friendly, he aint never gonna bend over for ya. Not _my_ brother.”

Back then, when Merle was still alive, latent desire hadn’t yet coalesced into thought. So Rick been able to shoot back coldly, with a clear conscience: “Whatever you’re implying, it’s not what I’m asking. Was he always dealt such a shit hand, your brother, or does he just get the short end when you’re around?”

A muscle jumped in Merle’s cheek. “Watch it, Friendly,” he threatened blearily. “You aint got a clue, you aint got a fucken… what you talkin about. Did my best w’him, didn’t I? Got him standing on his own two feet, didn…” He slid further down into the ruin of his mattress.

“Hershel called you the black sheep,” Rick prodded. “Is that it? You were jealous of him?”

Merle laughed til the tears ran down his cheeks. Rick folded his arms, disgusted. After all his years on the force he had little patience for addicts, psychotic and gibbering on whatever they’d snorted or shot up or injected into their eyeballs. At last Merle’s laughter trickled off into hiccups and he swiped at his cheeks with unsteady fingers.

“’M awful grateful, Friendly, I sure needed that. But you must be even dumber’n you look, cos you got it all ass-backwards. Weren’t me that was the black sheep, son! It was baby brother, weren’t it? Never got a damn thing right, did he. Fucken lily-livered negro-lovin bleedin-heart castrate, all his life. He mighta been real purty ta look at, back in the day, golden hair an’ all that shit, but _he_ was the family’s unowned boy, Officer Friendly. Not me. _I_ was made in our daddy’s fucken image, not him. Weren’t nobody seein the shine in that black sheep boy, not til _you_ , you fucken…”

“Sleep it off, Merle,” he advised, and left the man to his delirium. Not saying what he should have, _Daryl’s worth ten of you._ But then Merle went and did what he did, so he must have known already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUNDTRACK
> 
> Black Sheep Boy - Tim Hardin


	21. Tombstone Hand and a Graveyard Mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> annnd have another to make up for my recent dry spell.
> 
> as before, minor spoilers through 6.01.

**En route to the safe zone:**

“Thanks,” the man with the dangerous eyes said. “Fer savin him.”

Morgan looked over his shoulder at the other man trudging behind them. “ _Him_?”

“Aaron?” Daryl shook his head, looking irritated. He’d been perfunctory in his thanks earlier, but Morgan hadn’t minded. Odds were Daryl and Aaron could have made it to the fence without his intervention, no way of knowing. _All life is precious, Daryl._ Maybe he’d gilded the lily because Daryl’s narrow face remained hard, inscrutable. Morgan elected not to press the issue. “Nah,” Daryl said, voice grinding into gear like it had grown rusty from disuse. “Rick.”

“Rick?”

“You saved him.” Daryl scanned the horizon and picked up the pace. “He told me.”

“That was a lifetime ago,” Morgan said, caught off guard. “Lot’s changed.”

Daryl shook his head. “You saved him,” he said stubbornly. “’M in yer debt.”

 _For Rick’s life, but not your own?_ Morgan wondered.

 

**On the steps of the house:**

“I keep thinking, if you hadn’t shown up when you did…” Rick trailed off.

It was a new habit of Rick’s, he’d noticed, falling silent mid-sentence and vanishing so deep into his thoughts it was like he forgot you were there. Morgan acknowledged how little he knew Rick anymore. The man burned hot and cold, turned on a dime; in the old days he would’ve said Rick was crazy, but he knew from personal experience just how tenuous your hold on sanity could get.

He waited.

“I thought it was a bad idea from the start,” Rick said at last. “But he went anyway, _they_ went anyway, thinking they could save people.”

Rick’s daughter had fallen asleep in his arms. The name _Duane_ still seared like a branding iron, but the muscle memory was there, how to hold a baby, lull her to sleep.

“We don’t always see eye-to-eye,” Rick continued, shifting restlessly. “But I can’t hold it against him, I _need_ him, for that as much as anything. Did I tell you, he saved Judith? My family wouldn’t be here without him. My kids need him. This place needs him. If he’d died that day…”

Morgan watched Rick’s fists clench and unclench and he tried to make sense of it, what Rick was telling him. Seemed right and good that Daryl was his second; after a few days in this creepy-ass Stepford town he was thinking Daryl was the man he’d want at his back, too.

“Your man can take care of himself,” he said. “He’da figured something out.”

Must’ve been the right thing to say, because Rick nodded and cracked a grin. “Threw a brace of squirrels at my head, first time he laid eyes on me,” he said. “Weeks after, I thought he was gonna gut me in my sleep. He could do it, too…”

And Rick trailed off again, lost in fond reminiscence. Morgan shook his head slightly. Amused but a little disconcerted, too. Because it wasn’t right for a man to get sentimental about shit like that, being gutted in your sleep, not in a world like this. _He_ wasn’t about to clap Rick on the shoulder and say, “Hey, man, remember when I stabbed you? Weren’t those the days.”  

“Thank you. For bringing him back safe,” Rick said abruptly.

“More like the other way around,” Morgan replied, confused.

 

**After midnight in the spare bedroom:**

A shout and a thud next door and suddenly he was awake, reaching for his staff.

Then Rick’s voice: “Was that your nightmare, or mine?”

Daryl’s unmistakable growl, heavy with sleep: “Yours, asshole.”

Oh. _Oh._

The walls were paper thin. Morgan returned his staff to its resting place and turned over with a noisy squeak of springs. He flinched and held perfectly still, not sure what he was hearing but damn certain he oughtn’t be listening. What any man did in the privacy of his bedroom –

“What was it this time?” Daryl, barely audible.

“You.” Rick, louder, too loud, because Daryl shushed him. “I didn’t get there in time,” he whispered. “Couldn’t save you.”   

“Jus’ a dream.” Daryl’s gruff voice was oddly soothing. Morgan thought animals must like him, if he talked to them half as gentle as he talked to Rick. “Aint worth botherin bout. Lookit Asskicker over there. She aint fussed.”

A shaky exhale. “Yeah, and I can hear Carl, too…”

“Snorin like a steam whistle. These walls aint shit.”

Years ago, Morgan had met a man searching for his wife and son. The wife had died, and if Rick had found someone else – well. The man with the dangerous eyes and the deadly crossbow was nothing like cocoa butter and starched sheets and home-cooked meals, but…

“D’you mind waiting up for a bit? Just to make sure I don't...”

“Yeah, I got ya Rick.” Fabric rustling, the sound of someone turning over.

“Keep talking, okay?”

In the morning, Morgan knew, Rick would be cold as ice again, control and authority and don’t-fuck-with-me. Daryl would be terse and bad-tempered behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. Didn’t even have to say it, _don’t fuck with me_ , because nobody dared. And even though Morgan would probably be stopping up his ears with cotton and pulling the pillow over his head for nights to come, he was glad that he knew. It made sense of things.

“Huh…” Daryl’s quiet rasp was making _his_ eyelids feel heavy, too. “Gotta check yer bike’s oil level on the regular. Battery too. Keep a lookout fer loose connections in the cables an’ clamps. Clean out the terminals, unclog the exhaust tubes. Check the fuel lines fer weather damage an’ crackin, cos then ya gotta swap em out. Keep the chain lubed, extra heavy near the sprocket. Check yer tire pressure each time ya fill ‘er up fer gas. Last thing ya want, stranded on the side of I-sumthin-or-other with a blown wheel or a dead chargin system. Might make ya feel like a race hero, power-shiftin without backin off on the throttle, but you’ll wreck the transmission. If it aint broke, don’t fix it. Keep a level head an’ a weather eye, you’ll be jus’ fine…”

Morgan was asleep too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUNDTRACK
> 
> Who Do You Love - Bo Diddley


	22. Too Frail To Wake This Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A revenge tragedy.

“The hell’s wrong with you, man?”

Rick swam upwards into consciousness. His eyelids felt heavy and he couldn’t remember where he was. Slowly, ever so slowly, it all came back to him. Bed. House. Alexandria.

He was so tired and every muscle in his body ached. _Leave me alone – just a few more hours. Let me sleep._

“Rick.”

He _knew_ that voice, it had called him back many times before. So he pushed himself up on an elbow and looked blearily about the room.

It was still dark. He squinted at the shadowy figure silhouetted in the doorway. Broad shoulders, narrow hips, the familiar outline of the crossbow. Relief surged through him. “You’re back.” His voice came out shakier than he would have liked. “And the others?”

“Yeah,” Daryl said.

“Thank god.” He swallowed hard. “Glenn hasn’t –”

“I know,” Daryl said. “Already seen Michonne.”

Rick felt a twinge of guilt. He should have stayed up, too, keeping vigil for Glenn and Nicholas and Sasha and Abraham and Daryl, as Michonne and Carol had undoubtedly been doing. Had he really crawled off to sleep while his people were in danger, maybe even dead? He shook his head a little to clear it; there was a nagging feeling at the back of his mind that he’d forgotten something, something important.

“And the walkers? They’re –”

“Yeah,” Daryl said.

“Come to bed then,” he said, patting the space next to him. “You must be wiped. We can talk about it in the morning.”

“Are you outta your goddamn mind?”

Daryl’s tone was making him uneasy. Too level, too cold. He could understand if Daryl was pissed that he’d fallen asleep, but –

Daryl turned on the light. Rick scrubbed the last of the sleep from his eyes and looked him over for injury. Dirt, grease, walker blood, the knee of his pants gaping open to reveal an ugly scrape; had he fallen from his bike? But nothing alarming. No broken bones. No bullet holes. No bites. Rick let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. But something was wrong with Daryl’s face. His jaw was clenched, his mouth set in a thin line. Skin stretched too tightly over his cheekbones. His eyes – they were like black holes, vast, vacant, and Rick felt their inexorable pull, dragging him towards oblivion. He couldn’t look away, teetering at the edge of the River Styx, where Charon deposited those headed for the black darkness of Hades.

He blinked and the strange vision was gone. Just Daryl’s wan, tired face. His blue eyes, flat and dull looking. “You aint gonna say nuthin?”

“Say anything about wha –”

“I know, Rick,” Daryl said. “Woulda known even if Michonne hadn’t told me what house she seen you comin out of a couple hours ago. Felt it, ya know? Felt it the same as I’ve always felt everything between you an’ me.”

“What…?” Rick felt icy dread creeping into the pit of his stomach. If only his sluggish brain would catch up –

“Know what you did,” Daryl said, eyes boring into his. Rick had to look away; he was afraid of those eyes now, afraid they would try to swallow him again. “Know you kissed her. Know you fucked her.”

The missing piece fell into place. Rick reeled as the previous evening flashed before him – he’d been afraid, he remembered that, stretched to the breaking point with the walkers rattling the gates and no Daryl, no Glenn, no Sasha and Abraham. His feet had carried him back to that house, the house with the boarded-up window. He had gone inside and something had happened: she kissed him, didn’t she? _No_ , an insolent little voice reminded him, _you kissed her_. Dawning horror – yes, yes, he _had_ kissed her. And then steered her towards the bedroom. He knew the way because all these houses were built on the same floor plan. He’d kicked the door shut behind them. A short while later he’d found his way out, stumbled back to his own identical house. Fallen asleep. Forgotten.

“Daryl.” He hated the sound of his voice. Weak. Desperate. Pleading.

“That shit ya pulled when I was out with Aaron – forgave ya once,” Daryl said tonelessly. “Aint gonna happen again.”

“Please.” His voice cracked. “I’ll do anything. _Anything –_ ”

“Too late, Rick,” Daryl said. “’M done.”

“I’m sorry.” He knew it wasn’t enough. “I never – _never_ meant to do this to you, I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking. God, Daryl, you _know_ how I feel about you –”

“Don’t reckon I do anymore,” Daryl said. He shrugged and for a second his mask faltered. The sorrow in his eyes was deep and endless as the ocean. It pierced Rick to the core. Then Daryl was swinging his pack over his shoulder again and –

“Where are you going?” Rick demanded, high-pitched and panicky. “You’re not – Jesus Christ, you’re not _leaving_?”

“’S over,” Daryl told him. “Aint no place for me here.”

“No,” Rick said. “Daryl, no. No _! No!_ ” He tried to get up but the sheets were tangled round his legs like a shroud, and no matter how hard he fought, he couldn’t extricate himself. Trapped, immobilized like a fly caught in a spiderweb. He was still shouting, sobbing, long after Daryl had gone, his throat tearing open “ _Come back, please, come back to me! I’m sorry! Daryl, please, Daryl…_ ”

He jolted awake, Daryl’s name still on his lips. Tears still wet on his cheeks. He looked around frantically. Dark. Quiet. The other side of the bed was empty.

Because Daryl hadn’t come back yet. It was only a dream. A wave of relief broke over him but receded just as quickly. Daryl was still out there. Missing. Hurt, captured, or… _No. Don’t even think it._

But the rest… Rick pulled his knees up to his chest, suddenly sick with shame and horror. That part hadn’t been a dream. He’d really done… what he did. A black hole the size a full stop swallowed him. The finality of an ending. He’d fucked up too badly, and he knew deep in his bones Daryl would never forgive him a second time, not in this lifetime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like many others, I was frustrated after 6.05. Now that I've (hopefully) exorcised my feelings and taught Rick a lesson, I won't be returning to this particular set of depressing circumstances. I'll probably stick with pre-Alexandria until the show gives some indication of how Rick is going to sort himself out. 
> 
> SOUNDTRACK  
> Ceremony - New Order


	23. Your Running Tyres, They're Out Of Pressure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set somewhere between 5.09 and 5.10.

Maggie wouldn’t look at him. She walked with her head down and her arms wrapped around herself, deaf to _there’s a little water left, you should finish it_ and _Maggie, please, look at me._ Just one foot in front of the other, always half a pace in front of him or behind him but never at his side.

Their group had strung out into a long meandering chain. He and Maggie brought up the rear, with only Sasha trailing behind. It felt like the Bataan Death March. Not the Trail of Tears because they were all too parched to waste any water on tears. Except for Judith, who didn’t know any better. She was crying weakly now, strapped to Daryl’s chest in her carrier. Glenn watched Daryl lick a finger clean and give it to Judith, who quieted for a time, sucking with hollow-eyed concentration. Then she realized there was no sustenance to be had and started crying again.

Glenn looked at Maggie but her eyes were still trained on the ground. This was hell, the lowest they’d ever been. Bob dead, Tyreese dead, Beth dead, no food, no water, a gaunt band of scarecrows stumbling towards the inevitable.His wife was dying, his whole family was dying, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to save them.

Up ahead, he heard Daryl mutter _fuck this._ Wearily he raised his head and saw him bundle Judith into Carl’s arms and veer off into the trees. Rick’s head turned, but he didn’t try to stop him. _Hunting_ Glenn thought, and then with a wrench of self-disgust _at least he’s doing something._

“Maggie?” he said. No answer. “I’m gonna go with Daryl, okay?”

_Don’t be stupid. You don’t know the first thing about hunting. He doesn’t need your help. You’ll just get in the way._ He waited, but Maggie didn’t say any of those things. So he forced the water bottle into her limp hand and curled her fingers around it. “I’ll be back soon.”

He plunged into the woods after Daryl and it was only after the silence enveloped him that he realized how pointless this was. There was no sign of Daryl and he couldn’t _track a tracker._ Sometimes Rick had accompanied him and occasionally Michonne, but Glenn had never gone hunting with him. _Fucking useless now._

He was about to turn around and rejoin the group when he heard a repeated thunking sound. _Walker_ he thought nervously because surely an animal wouldn’t be making those noises. He drew his knife and advanced through the trees.

It wasn’t an animal. Daryl stood under a large tree, repeatedly slamming his fist into the trunk with tremendous force.

“Dude, what the hell are you doing?” Glenn exclaimed, sheathing his knife.

Daryl turned and Glenn blinked. He was looking at a Daryl he hadn’t seen in years, the Daryl he remembered from the old days at the quarry, the one with the wild homicidal eyes bunched fists loose cannon _Rick Grimes you got something you wanna tell me?_

But Glenn wasn’t the same kid _hey you got balls for a Chinaman_ he stood his ground but Daryl was already turning away and sending his knuckles into the tree again. Glenn darted forward and grabbed his arm, hanging on with all his strength and bracing for the punch he knew was coming _Daryl was fucking ambidextrous with his fists –_

But it never came. After a moment Glenn realized he was practically dangling off Daryl’s arm and Daryl was holding him up, bicep bulging with the effort. “Sorry,” he muttered, embarrassed, and let go.

Straightening up, he looked first at Daryl’s hand, bruised and bloody and already starting to swell. “Are you out of your fucking mind?” he demanded.

Daryl hunched a shoulder defensively. “Don’t see how it’s none a yer business,” he growled, shaking sweaty hair out of his eyes.

“ _Dude_ ,” Glenn said, helplessly. It was too much, the thirst the hunger the road Maggie’s face Daryl’s bloody knuckles.

Daryl released a sound of frustration and a made a move towards his tree. But stopped. Drew his knife and drove that into the bark instead. “Can’t feed her,” he said dully. “My baby girl’s hungry an’ I can’t fucken feed her.”

Glenn stared at him in amazement. Daryl gave him a dark look.

“You wouldn’t understand,” he snapped. “You aint got kids.”

Glenn couldn’t stop the smile creeping over his face. “Gotcha,” he said.

“ _What,_ ” Daryl practically snarled, now tugging madly to extricate his knife from the tree, “the _fuck_ is yer fucken _problem_ , man?”

“I’ve been trying to get you to admit it for _years_ ,” he said, trying and failing to suppress a chuckle. “You and Rick.”

Daryl finally jerked his knife free. “Didn’t say _shit_.”

“Yeah, you so did!” Glenn reminded him smugly. “ _Your_ kids. _Your_ daughter.”

Daryl scowled, but his face was so thin, the bones so prominent and close to the surface, that his glare was weaker than usual. “I’ll stomp yer ass, Chinatown.”

“Can’t take it back now,” Glenn taunted, feeling giddy and a little light-headed. “So you might as well admit –”

Daryl brought the crossbow up so quick Glenn instinctively ducked, thinking for one heart-stopping second that he’d pushed too far and Daryl actually meant to skewer him. But the arrow soared over his head and a second later a dead squirrel tumbled to the ground. “Pussy,” Daryl snorted, brushing past him to retrieve the squirrel. Glenn opened his mouth to retort, but when Daryl turned back, relief was etched into the harsh lines of his face.

“Least there’s sumthin fer Asskicker an’ Carl,” he said, yanking his arrow free. And Glenn realized how seriously he took it, being father to Rick’s kids. The crushing weight of responsibility. Rick was the leader but Daryl was the provider, and at times like this when they were lost and directionless and starving, the heaviest burden was Daryl’s to carry.

“C’mere.”

Glenn walked over and let Daryl unzip his backpack and stow the dead squirrel inside. Suddenly he recalled that long ago day – the scorching Atlanta rooftop, Rick’s gun aimed at Daryl, the rage and despair in Daryl’s red-rimmed eyes when he dragged Glenn over and shoved Merle’s grisly souvenir in his backpack and Glenn had to swallow the bile rising in his throat –

He watched Daryl take out his shop rag and tie a rudimentary bandage around his bloodied hand. He wondered if he should say something, maybe chide Daryl about inflicting that kind of damage on himself. But Rick was the only one who could control Daryl’s temper, just like Daryl was the only one who could call Rick back from the brink of crazytown. So he figured he’d let them work it out amongst themselves.

“C’mon, Korea,” Daryl said when he was through. “Let’s get back.”

Glenn followed as Daryl took off at a diagonal, moving rapidly to intercept the group before they got too far ahead.

The kids ate dinner that night. When they returned with the squirrel Rick had grabbed Daryl’s shoulders and pressed their foreheads together briefly. One of their rare moments of public affection, but Glenn couldn’t tease Daryl about it because he’d caught sight of the look on Rick’s face while Daryl fed his – _their_ – daughter bits of squirrel, and it was both wonderful and terrible to behold.

He whispered it to Maggie when they lay down to sleep. How all the months of curiosity and speculation back at the prison had been well-founded because Daryl had said _my baby girl_ and didn’t even try to deny that he and Rick were, well, just that. Maggie managed a faint smile and turned away.

He was still lying awake hours later when he heard Rick and Daryl slip off together. Their murmured words were too hushed and indistinct for him to make out _anyway Maggie was the nosy one_ but Rick’s spiked suddenly and he guessed the source of Daryl’s injury had been discovered. Then words gave way to soft sighs and stifled gasps and Glenn pulled the blanket up around his ears. His empty stomach rumbled and his mouth was dry, but maybe tomorrow it would rain and Daryl would shoot more squirrels and the color would finally come back to Maggie’s cheeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUNDTRACK
> 
> Burning Lights - Joe Strummer
> 
>  
> 
> PS: I have a new story up, THE LONG SHADOW, which is a slightly different take on Daryl & Rick's relationship.


	24. Mixed-Up, Muddled-Up, Shook-Up World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a prompt from MermaidSheenaz, who requested something from Aaron. Many of these are her ideas, so please give her some love!

It had to be nearly midnight when the doorbell rang. Aaron answered it anyway and wasn’t surprised to see Daryl standing on the porch, looking shifty.

“Brought ya some rabbits,” he said without preamble, thrusting them at Aaron.

“Did you just get back?” Aaron asked. He fumbled the dead animals, nearly dropping one, but Daryl seized it by the ears and piled it atop the other two. “It’s late.”

Daryl gave him a contemptuous look. “See jus’ as good in the dark. Night predator.” Seeing Aaron smile hesitantly, he added wryly, “’S a joke, man. You can laugh. Aint gonna bite yer head off.”

“You had a face like a thundercloud when you left,” Aaron reminded him gently. “You _snarled_ at me, remember?”

“Yeah, well.” Daryl shrugged. “Brought ya some rabbits.”

Aaron sighed. He had been concerned when Daryl stormed out the gate that afternoon looking, well, thunderous. It seemed like a poor idea for anyone to go out there in a blind temper, but Daryl looked unharmed and a good deal calmer. Aaron had seen for himself, on their aborted recruiting mission, the more relaxed Daryl became the further they traveled from Alexandria. Not that he smiled or cracked jokes, but the hostility, the cageyness – he sloughed them off like an old skin after they’d put enough distance between themselves and the town. Early in their friendship (and it _was_ a friendship) he told Daryl _I understand you need to be out there sometimes, so do I_ and it turned out to be an understatement, like most of the ways he tried to relate to Daryl turned out to be understatements. Aaron needed to get away from the funny looks and the snide remarks; Daryl needed the woods like he needed air.

“Want to come in?”

Daryl folded his arms. “You said it was late.”

“We’re still up. C’mon, let’s have a glass of wine.”

“Wine?” Daryl grimaced.

“You’ll like this one,” Aaron said, watching Daryl waver in his usual body-bind of indecision. “Eric’s been saving it.”

Daryl chewed his lip. “Yeah, alright,” he said at last.

 

xxx

 

“He’s definitely gay,” Eric said. They were washing dishes after the first spaghetti dinner.

“What?” Aaron said, absently.

“I’m sure he’s gay. I mean, so deep in the closet he’s practically in _Narnia_ , but…”

“I don’t know,” Aaron said doubtfully. “I don’t get the vibe from him. _Any_ sort of vibe, to be honest.” Most people were translucent, their wants and needs flickering just below the surface, ready to be fathomed. That was Aaron’s job, the fathoming, and he was good at it. But there were walls behind Daryl’s eyes. Rough manners and habitual scowl aside, he gave nothing away.

“You’re losing your edge,” Eric reproved him. “Your radar used to be impeccable.”

“I’ve had to recalibrate,” Aaron defended himself. “Now all that matters is recognizing the good people from the bad people.”

“Well, I still think he’s gay. Wanna take a bet?”

It was true, he _didn’t_ get any sort of vibe from Daryl, gay or straight or anything in between. Even after Daryl went to work on the motorcycle and started spending more time at their house – or in their garage, at any rate; he rarely took advantage of the door they always left open for him, even to use the bathroom – Aaron gained little insight into what Daryl actually thought or felt. Especially where sex was concerned. But something changed the night they come home with Morgan.

Drawing even with Daryl outside the gate, he nearly took a step back from the powerful pulse of the man’s – _aura._ Daryl was standing at attention, head thrown back, strange slanted eyes glittering in the moonlight. And he was radiating, well, _pure sex_ Aaron told Eric later _like a switch had been flipped._ It was formidable and almost otherworldly, and even though Aaron had never been afraid of Daryl, he still bit his tongue on whatever he was going to say and shut his mouth. Daryl stalked through the gate like he was scenting prey and Aaron followed half a step behind, wondering at the source. And then things got confused – screaming, a gunshot, and then all the carnage inside, Rick covered in blood and Reg and Pete Anderson dead at his feet.

Hours later, he passed Daryl and Rick as they returned from the spare house where Morgan had been – what? locked up? quarantined? Daryl gave him a short nod; Aaron returned it. And then they disappeared into their own house.

The next morning he happened to glance through their front window in passing. He could see Daryl standing in the kitchen. Then somebody passed him Rick’s daughter and Aaron spent a solid minute watching Daryl handle her like she was his own, bouncing her on his hip and feeding her the applesauce Aaron had happily unloaded on them, with gentle, practiced ease. Aaron goggled. In fact he was fortunate Daryl was too focused on his task to glance up and catch him staring.

The clues were tiny, but they _were_ there if you knew to look. That evening, he conceded Eric his victory.

 

xxx

 

Daryl wandered around their living room, absently picking up knickknacks and putting them back in the wrong places. He spent a while flipping through their CDs, only to announce, “y’all got shit taste in music.” Then Eric came in with the Cabernet and Daryl sampled it and pulled a face. “Aint much of a connoisseur, though,” he said, permitting Eric to refill his wineglass. “The fuck d’you spell ‘connoisseur,’ anyway? Fucken hate French.”

He was like a prowling jungle cat, and if he’d had a tail it would have wreaked havoc on their perishables. Aaron exchanged a glance with Eric. “How’re the kids?” he said neutrally.

“Aint seen em since morning,” Daryl grunted. He muttered something under his breath that could have been _an’ their dad’s an asshole_ , but Aaron couldn’t be certain. He exchanged another look with Eric.

“Are you hungry?” Eric said. “I could whip up some –”

“Nah.” Daryl went back to the CDs. Then: “Spaghetti?” he said hopefully.

“I could go for some, too,” Eric said, and retreated into the kitchen with a fleeting wink at Aaron.

“This is the only decent one ya got,” Daryl said, brandishing an unopened B.B. King record, “an’ it aint even outta the wrapper.”

“You can –” Aaron indicated the stereo but Daryl quickly put the CD back on the shelf.

“Shouldn’t waste electricity, man.”

 

xxx

 

“Do you think he’s hot?” Eric asked as they lay in bed one night. “Now that we know he’s –”

“ _Eric_.”

“Take it easy,” Eric told him, then added wickedly, “ _I_ do.”

“ _Eric_!”

“Go on, admit it! I won’t be mad if you’re not mad.”

“He’s with _Rick_ ,” Aaron said forcefully. “And I’m with _you._ ”

“And that’s why it’s totally okay for us to discuss it.” Eric paused. “ _So,_ do you?”

“He’s… different,” Aaron said after a moment. “I’ve never known anyone like him. There’s no way our paths would have crossed in the old world.”

“There’s no way he and _Rick_ would have crossed paths, either. I mean, a _cop_ … and him?” Eric giggled. “Now answer the question.”

“I don’t – maybe.” He conjured Daryl in his mind’s eye. “He’s…”

“Muscley?” Eric suggested. “Dangerous, yet melancholy? A brooding Lothario? A haunted Heathcliff?”

Aaron groaned.

“Can you imagine having _sex_ with him?” Eric lowered his voice, even though they were as alone as they’d ever been. “The way you described him that night – _pure sex_ , I believe you said –”

“But that’s not him – not usually, not that I’ve seen.” Aaron kicked the sheet away. “I think it’s just for Rick, maybe. But we should stop. It feels wrong to talk about him like this.”

“Rick doesn’t deserve him,” Eric said staunchly. “You and Daryl weren’t here, you didn’t see – Rick was _unhinged_ , Aaron. Not… sane.”               

“Hindsight is 20/20.” Aaron sighed. “If I’d known then, I wouldn’t have taken Daryl away from him.”

 

xxx

 

“In college, my roommate and I had a system,” Aaron said. “If one of us got lucky, we’d put a sock on the doorknob so the other guy knew not to come in. It’s called ‘sexiling,’ you know, exiled by sex. My roommate got luckier than I did, so I spent a lot of nights in the hall. I was usually too shy to smuggle boys in.”

Daryl snorted. When Aaron first started regaling him with stories like this, his eyes would narrow dangerously _why the hell’re you tellin me this, man?_ But these days he just nodded, sometimes one side of his mouth would quirk upward and he’d emit something almost like a laugh.

“Carl’s been askin questions,” he said now. “Dunno why he gotta come ta me instead of his dad. Kinky little fucker. Didn’t even know some a that shit _existed_ when I was his age.”

“Yikes.” Aaron shook his head. “I hated being a teenager. It was a horrible age. All specky and spotty and – yeah. Eric and I never really talked about having kids, before. Seemed like we had all the time in the world. And now…”

“Never woulda saw it comin,” Daryl said softly, turning to face the window even though the blinds were drawn. Inspecting his posture and the set of his shoulders, Aaron couldn’t detect any sign of aggression. Daryl never mentioned his relationship with Rick and Aaron never asked. But sometimes Daryl made oblique little allusions to it, most often through Judith and Carl. Whenever he let something slip, Aaron was careful to respond just as obliquely. He wanted Daryl’s trust, had even come to depend on it, comforted by an unspoken promise that if anything happened to him, Daryl would look after Eric. And having already taken a punch from Rick, he hated to imagine the kind of mincemeat _Daryl_ could make of his face.

“I had an older brother,” Aaron said. “So I got the gist of it from him, even though he didn’t tell me about the stuff I _really_ wanted to know.”

Daryl was silent. Aaron saw him bite his thumbnail and resisted the urge to walk over and tug his hand away from his mouth before it bled. But he’d seen Rick do it once, discreetly but intimately, and guessed Daryl wouldn’t accept that kind of touch from anyone else.

“Had a brother too,” Daryl volunteered suddenly. Then his shoulders slumped a little and he started pacing again.  

 

xxx

 

Aaron hated to recognize prejudice in himself, but not long after his return with Daryl and Morgan, he was forced to admit he had taken against Rick. Not on account of the punch or even the applesauce. No, it was the façade of discipline and control, stretched thin over a terrible ruthless streak, that set his teeth on edge. _A_ _stone cold killer_ , Eric had called him, and Aaron had to agree. Grown protective over their new friend, they both feared for Daryl.

“Not that we know anything about it,” Aaron said. That afternoon, they had witnessed an icily furious Rick point his gun at the idiot who had drained the communal generator and sent them into a temporary blackout. “Rick!” Daryl had barked, materializing suddenly at his side, and after some kind of wordless exchange, Rick had lowered the gun. Aaron marveled at the uncanny power Daryl exercised over him, but… “I’m sure things are different in private,” he added, unconvincingly, and Eric looked equally skeptical.

The next morning he watched Rick’s group leave their house, Michonne and Carol first. A moment later, Carl emerged, closely followed by Rick and Daryl, who was carrying Judith. They looked like a family. All of them, Rick’s group _was_ a family, tighter knit than any bound by blood in the old world – but especially those four. Daryl’s shoulder bumped against Rick’s and Rick’s hand lingered on Daryl’s arm. Carl said something to Daryl, and Rick laughed, a generous, merry sound. Daryl smiled. And looked across the street to lock eyes with Aaron. Aaron blushed. Sometimes he forgot himself, watching people. Forgot they could see him, too. But Daryl just gave him a faint nod and turned back to Rick’s son.

“I guess we don’t have to understand it,” he said later, describing the little tableau to Eric. “I don’t trust Rick with him any more than you do, but…”

“If you say it’s none of our business _one more time_ , I swear –”

“I find him attractive, yes,” Aaron said, just to derail Eric. But guiltily acknowledging the truth of it, how the prospect of finding Daryl in their garage always filled him with anticipation.

How the sight of Daryl and Michonne sparring in the backyard quickened his pulse, all those hard coiled muscles, Michonne’s volley of curses when Daryl overpowered her and Daryl’s startled whoop of laughter when Michonne knocked him on his ass.

How the vision of Daryl with his head thrown back in the moonlight haunted his dreams.

Eric’s expression said _I know what you’re doing_ , but he let it slide. “Daryl shouldn’t be allowed to wear sleeves,” he announced. “It’s a human rights violation.”

“Violating _what_?”

“My right to look,” Eric said.

 

xxx

 

The smell of tomato sauce was beginning to waft from the kitchen and even though they had eaten the same meal not six hours prior, Aaron felt his stomach rumble.

Daryl had finally settled on the windowsill, arms clasped loosely about his knees. Gazing at him, Aaron felt a pang. Daryl looked like he had been honed on the edge of a knife, sharp cheekbones sharp jaw narrow alleycat eyes. Not a scrap of softness anywhere. Because Daryl _was_ an outsider, a true one, practically a different species or an atavism from an older time. It was a tragedy that wrote itself, he thought, like _The Last of the Mohicans._

“Aw, save the waterworks man.” Daryl’s rough voice interrupted his thoughts and Aaron blinked away the moisture that had been gathering, unnoticed. “This aint the goddamn opera,” he added, deadpan; at least Aaron was reasonably sure he was deadpanning.

“The reason you left earlier…” he said awkwardly, clearing his throat. “It’s all right now, then?”

“Will be.” Daryl shrugged. Then he actually grinned, the first time Aaron had seen his thin face split into anything so youthful and unguarded. “Listen man, I aint the world’s most passionate guy, but I got sumthin I want,” he said easily.

“I…” Aaron trailed off. Something about the end of the world and limited options, but even so Daryl needn’t resign himself to something that was toxic, or degrading, or –

“Yeah, world’s gone tits-up, so what?” Daryl said, like Aaron’s mind was an open book he could peruse at will. “Don’t mean I’m stunted or sumthin.”

“I don’t think you’re stunted!” Aaron exclaimed, on the verge of springing up from his seat, but Daryl’s stern eyes held him in place. “I was just, I – we – … worry. Sometimes.”

“Oh.” Daryl seemed to relax. “Know it looks bad, me leavin. I gotta temper.”

“I know,” Aaron said.

“So if I get aggression, I give it two-time back.”

Aaron didn’t like that, _aggression._ “You shouldn’t have to –”

“Everybody does,” Daryl said flatly.

“But –”

“ _But_ it aint nuthin I can’t handle,” Daryl murmured, twirling the stem of his empty wineglass between his fingers. “Nuthin I don’t wanna come home to, end a the day, ya hear?”

“Sure, I believe you,” Aaron said, trying to. 

“Y’all watch every move I make, thinkin some shit’s bout ta go down, somebody’s gonna go postal. But it aint like that when nobody’s lookin.”

That was close enough to what he had told Eric, _I’m sure things are different in private_ , to make Aaron feel ashamed of himself. Daryl was a grown man, he knew his own mind and made his own choices. And since Daryl so rarely spoke of himself like this, emphatic and almost candid, Aaron had no choice but to accept his trust, and believe him.

“’Sides I got the boy an’ the girl,” Daryl added, looking almost cheerful now. “Gotta feed Asskicker her damn applesauce an’ tell Carl how ta do third base.”

“What?” Aaron exclaimed. “ _How_ to –”

“Well, ’m stretchin things out a bit.” Daryl smirked. “First’s a hug, second’s a kiss, third’s a grope. Dunno if he’s buyin, though.”

Aaron laughed; “Spaghetti!” Eric hollered from kitchen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUNDTRACK
> 
> Lola - The Raincoats


	25. The Animals

For just that one week in midwinter, Rick and Daryl lived like animals.

The snow and the walkers caught them off guard. Too little visibility, too many dead ones. They lost each other. The last thing Rick saw was the dark blur of Daryl going down, and then the walkers were upon him too. He shoved his knife into everything he could reach, but the sudden pain in his neck told him it was over. The worst part was that he was afraid. He hadn’t expected to be afraid, not after all the close calls and narrow escapes, too many to count, but he was. Deathly afraid. _oh god_ was he actually praying _this is a prayer you might not recognize it coming from my mouth_ that’s why he named it, out of all the times he said ‘oh god’ and god must have looked down and seen him getting fucked _i’m embarrassed to imagine. but now. oh god. now. god. i'm scared. i don’t want to die alone. if i could just know there will be someone there. to meet me. if i could just know. please. i don’t mind dying_ that wasn’t true _i do. but let me know i won’t be alone. i want somebody to meet me. not you. give me please just the person who loved me best let him come meet me please help me i don’t want to be alone promise me if i let go that he’ll be there_

It was the worst prayer in the history of praying, especially for a man who had sworn _not to mix it up with the almighty any more_. Especially after Daryl pulled him to his feet and brushed him down and the pain in his neck wasn’t a bite but the knife Daryl had thrown to kill the walker just before it could _i don’t understand you’re supposed to be dead –_ Nah said Daryl, jus’ took a tumble. Sorry bout your neck man, can’t see so good in the snow. C’mon, let’s check out that cabin I saw a half-mile back an’ I’ll get ya bandaged up.

So for just that one week, they lived like animals. Snowed in, roads impassible, thirty miles from the prison but it could have been a thousand. The little hunting cabin was warm and snug. Cozy, too, once they accepted they weren’t goin nowhere til the storm abated. They had the deer Daryl had shot and a good supply of canned food and dry wood. And each other, because somehow Rick wasn’t dead and Daryl wasn’t either. Daryl wouldn’t let Rick touch him until he’d cleaned and dressed Rick’s wound and built up a good fire. Then he let Rick pull him into a nest of sleeping bags piled before the hearth and Rick finally learned what sounds Daryl made when there was no one there to hear them. He gasped and cursed and came deep inside Rick with a low growl, and it was nothing compared to the noises Rick made but it was still something.

Later when Daryl climbed out of their nest he didn’t put anything on and it was the longest Rick had seen him without clothes. His lean sinewy body was magnificent in the firelight. He came back to the hearth with a hunk of venison and after they roasted it he fed half to Rick and licked away the bloody juices when they ran down his chin.

Hibernation left them with no choice but to stay warm and sleepy and close. Daryl’s hooded eyes glowed in the dark and he scraped his rough chin against Rick’s skin. Rick realized the stiffness in his back came from always holding his shoulders so tight and when Daryl’s strong fingers kneaded them loose he felt years younger. They were both rank and unwashed but Rick didn’t care, burrowing into Daryl’s armpit as Daryl lolled on his back, breathing heavily and covered in a fresh sheen of sweat from what they had just done. The musk of sex heavy on the air. Rick discovered a tattoo he had never noticed before, a coiled serpent on Daryl’s thigh, and he wondered how he could have overlooked it; he always lavished so much attention on the devil on his arm and the twin demons on his shoulder and the tiny _x_ that marked the best spot to kiss his collarbone. That’s cos ya spend all yer time between em, Daryl said, showing Rick the beard burn on his inner thighs.

They were skin on skin on skin, untangling themselves as seldom as possible, but Daryl didn’t mind because they were being animals. Eating and sleeping and mating there was nothing to interrupt them nobody to discover them only the two of them and hardly any need to talk. Rick thrashed and moaned and howled in his arms and it was like they were finally speaking the same language.

If it could only be like this always. Not having to think. Having enough food and sleeping in front of a fire and _closing your eyes and_ _kissing a mate who loves you back and staying far, far away from the people who aren’t a part of your pack and having every action and every decision just come naturally to you so all you have is a kind of grace, a kind of natural animal simplicity to your life so you that you don’t ever have to think about god or loyalty or even death – raise your hand if you want it to unfold like that for you forever so you can live in peace, raise your hand_ Rick raised his hand and tangled it in Daryl’s hair but he was picturing Carl’s face more and more and Daryl wondered if Judith’s new tooth had broken through yet.

On the seventh day they opened their eyes and the sun was out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUNDTRACK
> 
> Animal Mask - The Mountain Goats


	26. Fantasy World, Disney Girls

With Rick, it came on gradually over the course of that long bleak winter. A kind word here, an extra hand there. He had a strong square jaw and very blue eyes. She probably gave herself away the first time she hugged him, holding on a little too long. Sometimes she thought a tiny flicker of amusement crossed his face every time she clasped his hand and embraced him, which made her feel foolish but never put her off for long. He was the best looking man she’d ever seen, and after he started working in the garden his face lost that haunted look and he smiled again.

With Daryl, it happened while she was doing laundry on a spring afternoon. She hated laundry day; it took hours, even with half a dozen women pitching it. _Yes, women_ she thought wryly, and felt a sudden pang for Andrea. She’d never liked her much, especially after the botched suicide attempt, and didn’t feel much regret when she was left behind at the farm. She felt even less when Rick came back from Woodbury with Daryl and Michonne and said Andrea was dead. But now she remembered the way Andrea tore into Dale and Shane, demanding to carry a gun. How she’d refused to do anything around the house and wrangled her way into the men’s tasks. But _she_ was nothing like Andrea. She didn’t even _want_ to fire a gun, not if she could help it; she just wanted them to remember that she _could._

She was hanging out the last of the clothes to dry when Carl stomped into the courtyard, dragging a lumpy bundle behind him.

“Here’s my laundry,” he grunted in his squeaky octave-spanning imitation of Daryl’s growl.

Her first instinct was to laugh, but she kept a straight face when she told him, “We’ve already finished with the washing. You’ll have to wait til next week.”

“Can’t you do it anyway?” he said, and she put her hands on her hips, irritated in spite of her good intentions.

“No, I can’t. We’ve finished here and as soon as Daryl gets back I have to help Carol with dinner.”

He glowered at her and she scowled right back. He’d lost his mother and he was at odds with his father; her heart broke for him. But they’d all lost people, they’d all suffered, and Carl was turning into a bully. His childish crush had curdled into an obstinate determination to set her at his beck and call. And her patience was wearing thin. “You’ll just have to wait,” she said sympathetically, patting his arm.

It was the wrong move. “But it’s your _job_!” he shouted. “You pick up everyone else’s shit.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that,” she scolded him.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” he snapped, turning red. As he stomped off he mumbled, loud enough for her to hear, “God, you’re such a _bitch_.”

Her mouth fell open, but before she could reply a long shadow fell between them. “Let’s hear that again, kid,” Daryl said. “Once more fer the folks in the back.”

She hadn’t seen him come in, but here he was, hands and forearms streaked with blood. He’d brought back a deer; two men were already carrying it inside. “It doesn’t matter,” she interceded quickly, because he looked mad as hell and downright scary. “Daryl, let it go.”

He ignored her. “No?” he asked Carl. “Well, looks like you got latrine duty for a week, kid, two if I hear ya talkin shit again.”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” Carl said, trying to look tough when he should’ve been quaking in his boots. “My dad –”

“Would make it two weeks,” Daryl finished for him. “Lucky you got me. Now ya better make that apology sound real sweet, kid.”

That was the moment she fell in love with Daryl, too. He wasn’t your storybook white knight, but there was a roguish Robin Hood aspect to him. Or maybe that was stretching it. But he had blue eyes, too, darker than Rick’s but just as striking.

The two of them, though, they only saw her as Judith’s babysitter. She wanted the camaraderie they showed Michonne, Maggie, Carol, Sasha – the women who were their equals. Daryl and Carol? People were always speculating… Rick and Michonne? _Daryl_ and Michonne, all those weeks tracking the Governor, just the two of them? And Sasha, Sasha was so beautiful…

What about her? What about Beth Greene? She changed diapers. She cooked and she cleaned and she wiped up baby vomit. She did their laundry. Well, not Daryl’s. To be fair. Not that she would have minded. But he washed his own clothes, which was probably why they probably never looked completely clean. All the others, though. They left their dirty clothes heaped on the floor for her to pick up, because they had more important things to do. Like going on runs, clearing the fences, standing guard. Nobody asked her to shoot a gun anymore, now that they had enough people for a division of labor. She scrubbed mud and blood until her back ached and her hands turned rough and red. Daryl brought her a jar of balm one day and blandly informed her it was meant for cow teats but should work just fine on her hands. When she tried to hug him he flinched away, so it didn’t look like he’d be falling in love with her any time soon.

The reality of it was so tiresome that she let her imagination drift away. She created a sort of hybrid, a dashing stranger with Rick’s nose, mouth and jaw, Daryl’s cheekbones, shoulders and muscles, and, for good measure, Glenn’s sense of humor. One day this stranger would appear at the gate. Daryl would ask him the three questions and he’d be invited to stay. And then… Sometimes he was injured, and she ministered to his wounds. Other times, he was a musician and they took to writing songs together. Usually at this point in her daydream, a cure was discovered and all the walkers disappeared from the face of the earth. After the dust had settled, the two of them would go off to live in a little cottage somewhere. He would smile at her with Rick’s mouth, and hold her close in Daryl’s big strong arms. One day there would be a baby, maybe two…

Then Maggie ruined everything with a breathless account of how she and Glenn had snuck off to one of their secret spots in the admin building, only to stumble upon _Daryl and Rick in there kissing._ Rick had his hands in Daryl’s hair, Maggie reported, and Daryl had _his_ hands shoved down Rick’s back pockets. Daryl nearly blew a gasket, turning ten shades of scarlet, but Rick hadn’t seemed fazed by the interruption, Maggie said, because he’d started back on kissing Daryl before the door had even shut behind them.

Maggie knew all her secrets, knew she had a crush on Rick, or Daryl, one or the other, sometimes both. But Maggie had a cruel streak, too, and enjoyed force-feeding her gory tidbits, like how tightly Daryl had been molded to Rick, or how Rick had an obvious hard-on when Daryl jerked away.

The sparkling soap bubble popped. Now when she tried to conjure her mysterious stranger, he split in two and embraced himself, becoming Daryl’s hand on Rick’s knee and Rick’s arm slung across Daryl’s shoulders. All the little signs she should have noticed but never did, because her daydreams seemed so much realer. Her phantom lover vanished, and her little cottage sank into the sea.

 

xxx

 

“Whoa, your eyes are huge,” said the new kid Zach. “You have literally the biggest eyes I’ve ever seen. Like Bambi. Or a Disney princess. Let me get that for you,” he added, gallantly picking up the last piece of laundry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUNDTRACK
> 
> Disney Girls (1957) - The Beach Boys


	27. Every Cheap Hood Strikes a Bargain with the World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For MermaidSheenaz, who first raised the question.

He lay facedown on the mattress with Rick plastered to his back like a sea barnacle. “Aint gonna change my mind,” he grunted. “’M too fucken tired.”

Rick’s icy fingers crept under his stomach and began to unbutton his flannel. He shivered; Rick worked the shirt down his arms and cast it aside somewhere. Then Rick’s lips landed just below his ear, feather-light. “Can I ask you something?”

“No.”

“You don’t like taking your shirt off…”

“So ya took it off for me, Sheriff?” he mumbled into the pillow, already half-asleep.

“How’d you decide to get tattooed here?” Rick’s hand, much warmer now, settled over the twin demons.

“Drunk, wasn’ I?” he said roughly, trying to jostle Rick off his back. But the other man wouldn’t budge, hot breath fanning across his neck.

“You told me once they were meant to be –”

“Merle an’ me, yeah. Now shut the fuck up an’ let me sleep.” But he was always running his damn mouth round Rick, like chatter was some kind of contagion and Rick was patient zero, kissing him vulnerable then getting inside his bloodstream, his immune system, and swallowing his white blood cells one by one til he was infected too.

~

Every cheap hood strikes a bargain with the world, and it was him and Merle against them all. Back to back, you take him an’ I’ll take him – unless Merle was the one pummeling him into the dirt for his smart mouth or his blue eyes or his

Old lady down the street, she said he had the mark of the devil on him. Crossed herself every time he walked by. Got more and more creative as the years went on; soon she upped it to two, _two_ devils fighting for his soul. No question they was devils, _you goin straight to hell, boy_. Far as he was concerned, two devils was better than one. That way there was one for Merle too.

Hard to explain, really, when a person only got one other person in the whole damn world and they’re a nation of two gone rogue and seceded from the Union. Prospects not lookin too sweet. _Kick off yer high heels, Darlena, who toldja it’d be easy?_

Sad sorry thing ta see a grown man jump from a slap on the back. Don’t deserve the balls he was born with.

That was Merle, both of them skunk-drunk and reeling on their barstools. Merle preaching bullshit, him glaring at anybody what got too close. Gonna be like his old man, he could see it already, love and hate tattooed across his knuckles, ready to slap his kids around when they got in the way. _Go on_ said Merle, _fill ’er up, stick it where it hurts_. But he couldn’t do it.

(Remember the first time? Can’t remember a worse time. Hurt some too chafe and burn after the wetness ran out. Listening to fake moans and howls _you fakin I know yer fakin woman._ Shouldna just lay there and took it. Shoulda walked out on his own two feet before he went soft and fell out.)

_Don’t want no fucken kids anyway._

That’s all the world was. Assholes bastards fucking cunts and pricks. Keep yer eyeballs white and keep yer needle clean. _Nuh-uh, Merle, that shit aint for me_ but it was too late Merle had already stuck him with it and after he quit puking he started feeling pretty good. Left the bar after a while, ended up in one of those sleazy dives with flashing neon signs and lounge chairs sticky with lord knew what. Merle oiled up the charm and swayed over to the blonde behind the counter so he went back by himself. Hard to say what happened then but one of the fluorescent lights was blinking and the gun made an industrial buzzing sound as it moved across his skin. He didn’t feel a damn thing.

Woke up the next morning mouth dry, stomach lurching, pissed at Merle _you let me do_ what? _No, ya can’t see it, aint fer yer eyes, you fucken asshole._ Two demons better than one. Pissed enough to do something crazy, what would piss him off most? _You a fag, baby brother? Tell me an’ I’ll pound it outta ya jus’ ta prove how much I love ya._

Couple hours, coupla whiskies later. Stood in a shitty motel room facing the other guy.

_I’m not taking_.

_Well I aint neither_.

_Guess we’re done here_ said the other guy.

So that was that. Turned out he was nothing at all, just didn’t have it in him. Soon he got a third demon tattooed on his inner arm; it was kind of addictive, the buzzing gun and the dull pain. The small ones he did himself, India ink and a sharp sewing needle. Jabbing it in harder than necessary, listening for the little pop that said he’d got through the first layer of skin. _Nice work baby bro_ said Merle _you gotta knack for makin yerself uglier._

So he decked Merle and they fought long and dirty, raised enough hell that someone called the cops. Together they sprinted for the woods, black eyes and loose teeth forgotten, holding each other up and howling with laughter. Fight long, fight hard, fight your brother. Die young, die ugly, start again the next morning. Aint nobody else in the world could understand, it didn’t come better than this.

~

Except this was it now. A prison cell in goddamn Georgia with an ex-cop pinning him flat and knocking the air right outta his lungs. This was his paradise.

(The odds against him, they’d started off unbeatable. But he’d been broke down and busted so many times that the only _fuck you_ left was to pick himself up and make good. Turns out he had guns all along, they were just waiting to be stuck by.)

The last time him and Merle had fought back to back was for Rick, but three men can’t dance a two-step tango and Merle had bowed out. He’d thought about bowing out, too; glad now that he didn’t because that damn cop, the albatross round his neck, had fallen asleep right on top of him and was drooling all over the twin demons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUNDTRACK
> 
> Death or Glory - The Clash  
> The Ballad of El Goodo (Live at Memphis) - Big Star


	28. Studyin War No More

“An’ no pillow talk,” he’d said, before he blew out the candle.

Michonne snorted. _Pillow talk._ The expression lacked solemnity for what might pass between two battle buddies, hunkered down in an old winnebago. Middle of the woods, middle of the night, end of the world. Backs against the unyielding plywood floor. Sharing a pillow, bodies stretched in opposite directions. Wide awake. Because they’d agreed it was safe to sleep through the night. So each privately elected to keep watch for the other. Too good at what they did, too well matched. Battle buddies.

“Daryl?” she whispered.

“Mh?”

They had taken turns bathing in the river. He put up a fuss; she jibed him into it. _I don’t want your fleas. You’re heading for a nasty case of swamp-ass, Dixon._ So after she was clean he grudgingly consented to follow suit. She unsheathed her sword and sat on a rock, listening to him splash and grumble to himself. Taking a damn sight longer than she had. A loud curse made her swivel and she laughed at the sight of him, hopping on one foot as he tried to get his boots on. Pants hanging low on narrow hips, shirt gaping open. The lean, hard muscles of his chest and stomach merited an admiring glance so she indulged in a quick once-over; the man was so damn modest they could both be dead ten times over before she got another peek. His chest was dappled with bruises and the largest one over his left nipple was so distinctive that she doubled over, laughing til she couldn’t breathe. He went bright red, of course, and the color burned high on his cheekbones all afternoon. Hell, it was probably still there.

“We’re both adults,” she reminded him condescendingly. “Adults talk about these things.”  

He mumbled something unintelligible.

“Wanna talk about the first time we went out together?” she teased.

“Lord, _no_.”

 

xxx

 

The first time they went out together. As soon as the dust had settled, she announced she was going after the Governor.

“I’ll go with you,” Daryl had said, too quickly.

Instinctively she glanced at Rick, in time to catch the ripple of dismay that crossed his face. “Daryl –” Rick began, and his eyes had a pleading look she’d never seen before.

“First light tomorrow?” Daryl ignored him.

“Yes,” she said.

It was obvious, he’d been so eager to get away from _Rick_ that he hadn’t considered the prospect of days alone with _her._ He didn’t find her bad company, she could see that. She wasn’t a talker and she moved more quietly than Rick. Perhaps he found her beautiful, in his limited way. The thought was oddly gratifying. But she knew his appraising looks were for her muscles and her grace, and for the possibility – unnerving and intoxicating – that she might get the best of him in a fight.

He was courageous and eminently capable. But grief and something even more toxic simmered behind his eyes. They were bedded down in an unfinished housing development two weeks later when he finally ran out of shits to give. “Wanna fuck?” he said, not looking at her.

“Didn’t think you were into that,” she said, carefully.

“ _Am_ ,” he said, too aggressively. And she thought, _why not_? If he was going to be that blind, that reckless and destructive, she could certainly take her pleasure from a man like him. In some ways they were made for each other. Violent and secretive with enough skeletons to populate an entire graveyard. Or she could draw her sword and make him rue the day he ever thought to use _her_ for distraction. Teach him that she was not a woman to be trifled with.

But then his shoulders sagged and he put his head in his hands. Looking so angry and miserable and lost that she just had to spell it out for him. _Rick asked Merle to take me to the Governor so you wouldn’t have to._

“An’ cos he wanted Merle dead,” he said.

_Merle wasn’t a stupid man_ , she reminded him. _He was playing Rick as much as Rick was playing him._ “He did it so Rick wouldn’t send you in his place.”

“You sayin they played each other,” he said, dubious, “fer _me_?”

“Why is that so hard for you to believe?” She grew impatient. This hunt, it was meant to be the final act of her own revenge tragedy. She would take the Governor’s other eye for Andrea and give him a slow death. And then some of the weight might finally lift from her chest and she could begin again, as Rick had promised. She had no intention of letting Daryl and Rick hijack her agenda with petty domestic squabbles.

But Daryl stayed quiet and suddenly she realized it _was_ hard, maybe damn near impossible, for him to believe that anyone could care so much. The ice in her heart began to thaw. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” she offered. “He would do anything for you.”

He just scowled, and went back to tinkering with his arrows. An hour later he said, “Shouldna overstepped,” and she accepted it as his apology.

The next morning he suggested they head back to the prison.

 

xxx

 

“I’ll tell _you_ something,” she said. “Remember your pick-up line that night? Two words, it was beautifully concise: ‘Wanna fuck?’”

“Don’t remind me,” he groaned. “’M sorry, ’Chonne, I was an idiot.”

“I almost said yes,” she told him, waiting for his sudden intake of breath and horrified scramble for cover.

But he just nodded. “I know.”

“You _know,_ Dixon?”

“Pretty low-down, both of us, that night,” he said. “Reckon it wouldna been the worst thing in the world, though. If we had.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she said tartly. “I’m not a bad lay, you know.”

“Well I’da been _shit_ ,” he said, with just enough self-deprecation that she reached over and thumped him on the chest, aiming for the biggest bruise.

“Well, obviously _somebody_ disagrees.”

They tussled briefly but it was too dark and confined in the winnebago for proper sparring. Rick didn’t like it when they came home with bruised wrists and aching joints, didn’t like their private hand-to-hand training. Daryl made it worse, winking and leering _number one rule a fight club, Rick, don’t talk about fight club._ But Daryl needed it as badly as she did. They couldn’t grow soft, not when the Governor was loose and his trail gone colder than ever.

“Chonne.” He turned his head to face her. “This is my last one. When we get back… Can’t go out trackin with ya no more. They asked me ta join the council, an’ I gotta stop leavin him so long. I got…”

“Responsibilities.” She nodded. “I know.”

“You could stay, too.”

“I can’t.”

“Yeah.”

“This was my plan all along,” she told him, trying to hide the pang of sadness she felt at the loss of her battle buddy. “Knew if I wore you down, tuckered you out and found you a mate, you had to drop out eventually. Now the one-eyed bastard’s all _mine_ , Dixon.”

“Fair an' square. You was always cleverer’n me,” he said. “Gonna miss this, though.”

“Me too,” she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUNDTRACK  
> Down by the Riverside - Sister Rosetta Tharpe


	29. Up the Hill Backwards

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief coda to 6.09.

In the end, fate made the decision for them.

It happened the way it had to. Shrugging off the lady doctor’s ministering hands, the wound on his shoulder only half-stitched, needle and thread dangling from his skin. Stumbling into the bedroom. Rick was crouched before the bed where Carl lay, pale and still, with a thick swathe of bandage around his head.

He dropped to his knees beside Rick, almost sick with fear. Unable to stop himself, he reached out an unsteady hand and placed it over Carl’s heart. The beat was there, slow and steady under his palm. His hand left a bloody print on the sheet when he finally drew away.

“Rick,” he croaked. The other man was glassy-eyed and grey under all the dried walker blood. “Rick.”

“Daryl.” Rick collapsed against him and Daryl held him fast, arms locking tightly around his chest.

“I got ya,” he murmured. “I got ya, man. He’s gonna be fine.”

“His _eye_ …” Rick’s voice wavered and cracked.

“So what?” Daryl said roughly, giving the man in his arms a little shake. “He aint dead. Doc over there says his brain weren’t hit. ’S all that matters. You still got your boy, Rick.”

“We still got him,” Rick repeated.

“Damn right we do.” He rested his chin against Rick’s shoulder. “C’mon, Sheriff, keep yer powder dry. Gotta be strong fer him when he wakes up.”

“Daryl…” Rick turned his head. He was so close, Daryl could see the tears beading on his eyelashes. He was so close, their mouths were touching.

Clutching desperately at one another, they kissed like they kissed behind closed doors. Like they were the last two people left in the universe, save for the boy unconscious beside them.

He bit down on Rick’s lip and tugged gently. The words poured out of his mind, too powerful to staunch. _He’s a tough sonuvabitch, that kid. He’ll pull through. Motherfucker, you never came back on the CB, I thought I’d lost you._ And Rick’s, just as hasty. _Damn near lost my mind while you were out there. Can’t do this without you. Love you. Love you_ and he was saying it back, _fucken love you too, you fucken bastard_ , soppy as hell and not even caring anymore. _Night’n day, aint never gonna leave you again_ promises he couldn’t keep but found himself swearing anyway. _Lord almighty, Rick._

The kiss flared into something hard and desperate, and Rick turned in his arms, fingers scrabbling against the exposed skin of his back. Pressed together so tightly he never wanted to remember the difference, where Rick ended and he began.

When they ran out of air they eased back, just the barest brush of lips and stubble. Then Rick brought their foreheads together, and they stayed like that until they were steady again.

And then he felt them. The eyes. His prickling skin should have warned him, but he’d been too lost in Rick. All the ones who didn’t know – the lady doctor, Spencer, Heath, Tobin –hovering in the doorway. There was no pretending they hadn’t seen; shock repeated itself in each pair of wide, staring eyes.

The secret, the one they had guarded so fiercely, for reasons Daryl could scarcely recall now, was out. The word would spread and soon everyone in Alexandria would know what they were to each other. Him and Rick. Gossipy tongues putting words to something they’d never quite managed to put words to themselves.

But looking down at Carl, whose chest was rising and falling regularly under the sheet, he found he didn’t care. And when he saw the answering gleam in Rick’s eye, he knew the other man didn’t care, either.

It was strangely liberating.

But that still didn’t make it anyone’s business but their own. He got to his feet and showed the onlookers his middle finger, shutting the door in their gaping faces. When he turned back to the bed, Rick offered him a rueful smile. “So.”

“Yeah,” he said, lowering himself to the floor beside Rick. Then he remembered the needle and thread still swinging from the half-sewn gash on his shoulder. “Gettin closer ta Frankenstein’s monster, every day,” he said, biting off the thread.

Rick knew him too well to insist he go back out there and finish getting himself stitched up. “You gonna be okay with this?” he asked, hand resting on Daryl’s uninjured shoulder.

“Never played by nobody’s rules,” he answered gruffly, crowding closer to Rick and bumping their noses together. “Aint about ta start now.”

“Here we then,” Rick said.

“Yeah. Here we are.”

There was a faint groan from the bed, and they both leant down eagerly as Carl’s eye fluttered open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUNDTRACK
> 
> Up the Hill Backwards - David Bowie


	30. Time Will Sweep Us Sinners By

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tweaked the end of 6.10 for my own amusement. (No slight intended towards Michonne; she's one of my very favorites). Enjoy!

It was far too easy to slip past the guard they’d left for him.

As the dawn light crept in, he flattened himself against the wall and inched up the stairs, testing each step for creaks. The first bedroom he peered into was empty. The second was occupied by a snoring teenager and a baby in a crib.

The third belonged to Rick Grimes. But Rick wasn’t alone.

He hadn’t known what they were to each other, when he encountered them that afternoon. More than acquaintances, surely; their movements were perfectly coordinated and they communicated with their eyes. He’d have called them brothers except there was no familial resemblance. Rick spoke with the confidence of somebody used to giving orders, somebody who had gone to college. Daryl emanated a different kind of authority altogether. They complemented each other. But he wouldn’t have guessed what they were to each other.  
  
Rick lay on his back, the sheet tangled around his hips. A possessive hand resting on the body beside him. Daryl was sprawled on his front, one arm flung across Rick’s chest. Sheet shoved dangerously low, hinting at the curve of his backside. The room smelled like sex. In fact, to his speculative eye, it looked as if they’d collapsed where they finished. Daryl still half atop Rick, their legs tangled together.

The tattoos on Daryl’s right shoulder drew his eye. Angels or demons, he couldn’t quite make out; something winged, they seemed to be moving of their own accord as Daryl’s back rose and fell in the easy rhythms of sleep. Then he saw the scars.

The wrongness of his own presence was suddenly so overpowering that he nearly shut the bedroom door again. But then the urgency of his purpose returned to him.

He put his hands up, _I come in peace_ , and steeled himself.

“Rick. Daryl. Wake up.”

The reaction was faster than even he could have anticipated. A blur of movement and they were both on their feet. Rick’s revolver aimed at his forehead. Daryl’s bowie knife raised, poised for throwing.

“We should talk,” he said.

Rick’s finger tightened on the trigger.

He never even saw Daryl move, but suddenly Daryl’s powerful arm had pinned him against the wall and the knife was at his throat. “Gimme a reason,” Daryl hissed, “or I swear I will.” The blade pressed down slightly. If he swallowed, it would draw blood. He was acutely conscious of Daryl’s proximity, his nakedness, his hot breath. His throat bobbed convulsively and the knife bit into his skin. He felt a tiny trickle of blood run down his neck.

“How long ya been standin there?” Daryl’s quiet voice was loaded with contempt.

“Daryl.” That was Rick, but Daryl’s body blocked him from sight.

Daryl didn’t budge. “Answer the question, prick.”

The man’s presence was making him dizzy. So much coiled strength in those muscles, Daryl could wring his neck like a chicken’s. He made the mistake of meeting his eyes. Narrow, uncanny eyes. Stormy blue with an undertow that made him lose the words at the tip of his tongue. Speechless, he stared back.

“Daryl. We’ll hear him out.”

Both the arm and the knife were gone. He took a deep breath.

They were staring at him, the pair of them. Shoulder to shoulder, exactly the same height. He couldn’t help it; his eyes flicked down over Daryl’s body.

Suddenly it was Rick shouldering into his space. “Get out,” he ordered. Another set of blue eyes, cold as ice. “Wait in the hall.”

He took several steps backward and the door banged shut in his face. _Could’ve gone worse_ he told himself, sitting down on the stairs to wait. Daryl could’ve slit his throat. _Daryl._ He shivered. But he couldn’t dwell on what he’d seen, not when he had to win them over. Those two had looked like tough sells even before he’d stumbled on them in bed together. They’d be even tougher now.

The landing creaked, and for the second time that morning, a gun was pointed at his head. “The hell are you doing in our house?” the teenager, the one who’d been asleep in the second bedroom, demanded. Even with overgrown hair and half his face bandaged, he was Rick in miniature. His son.

He sighed. “Sitting on the steps, looking at this painting…” He didn’t know what possessed him to say what he said next. “Waiting for your dad and Daryl to get dressed.”

The kid didn’t bat an eye. He kept the gun trained on him, steady triggerfinger just like his dad’s. Then two more people appeared at the foot of the stairs, the man called Glenn they’d set to guard him, and a formidable-looking woman with a _sword_ of all things. Glenn’s eyes widened at the sight of him, and he opened his mouth to start explaining when Rick and Daryl emerged from the bedroom. Rick was holding his shirt in his hand; Daryl was still doing up his belt. The sight of them made his mouth twitch, but with so many weapons pointed at him, he knew better than to laugh. Daryl’s cutoff shirt was buttoned all the way up to his neck, and he’d donned his leather vest, too. Knife in one hand, pistol in the other, like he was headed to the OK Corral. But then a vision of the scars crisscrossing Daryl’s back flashed through his mind, and the amusement dried up. All five of them were staring at him, weapons raised, and he began to wonder if he’d miscalculated. Daryl’s eyes glittered dangerously.

Rick’s voice cut through the silence. “You said we should talk. So let’s talk.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUNDTRACK:  
> The Sound of Sinners - The Clash
> 
> 1) I would love for all of you to check out my new Rickyl story with MermaidSheenaz, ALWAYS CRASHING IN THE SAME CAR. I'm immensely proud of our collaboration and thrilled to finally be sharing it. 
> 
> 2) RIP Prince.


	31. Back Door Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A similar tweaking of 6.11, through the eyes of our favorite voyeur. Representing only a tiny fraction of the bountiful ideas MermaidSheenaz plied me with.

“Both of you looked like trouble. I was wrong.”

That last part was a lie, tacked on to soothe the tempers crackling around him. Rick was dangerous. So was Daryl. Daryl was the worst trouble he’d landed in since the world went to hell.

“You and Rick had every reason to leave me out there, but you didn’t.”

He held Daryl’s eyes. Daryl glared back.

Rick cleared his throat, and Paul turned back to him. The expression on the man’s face could’ve stripped paint. Raising an eyebrow, he continued, addressing himself to Rick this time. He was learning the rules quickly. Only talk to the leader. Don’t look at Daryl.

But Daryl himself made that difficult, pacing in and out of his peripheral vision. He was obviously agitated, twirling a pistol and cutting off every overture with a biting retort. The hostility rolled off him in waves. It even had a scent, like woodsmoke and tobacco.

With a supreme effort, he dragged his focus back to Rick. Making his case as calmly and plainly as he could. Daryl still interjected periodically, as though keen to make sure Rick didn’t fall for any of this honey-talk. Rick looked coldly skeptical, not even reacting when he played his trump card.

“You mean you’re already trading with other groups?” Maggie said incredulously.

“Your world’s about to get a whole lot bigger,” he told them, unable to keep the smile from spreading across his face.

“Horseshit,” Daryl snapped, stepping in to block his view of Maggie. “Plenty big enough as is.”

He waited in the hall while they deliberated amongst themselves. Maggie and her husband Glenn were for it; he knew he’d had them at _other settlements._ Michonne and Daryl spoke too softly for him to make out their words. Leaning against the wall, he let his thoughts drift back to the bedroom he’d been so unceremoniously ejected from. Daryl had an unusual face. Fine-boned, almost exotic. He had broad shoulders and a narrow waist. His body was rugged. Rangy and muscular. Paul wondered how he’d gotten those scars. Most of them looked old, like they’d been part of his skin for a long time.

The door opened and Carl stuck his head out. “My dad and Daryl want to talk to you,” Rick’s son announced, and the names sounded like a matched set, the way they rolled off his tongue.

“Your parents don’t trust me,” he said. “Do you?”

“No,” Carl said.

A short time later they had dispersed to get ready for the trip. Rick, Daryl, Michonne, Maggie, Glenn, and the red-haired giant Abraham would accompany him back to Hilltop. The war cabinet, as it were. He was instructed to wait in the kitchen, but as soon as the others had left the room, he drifted into the hallway and found himself at the foot of the stairs again.

He used every ounce of his stealth training to ascend. It was trickier in broad daylight, when there were no shadows for him to blend into.

He didn’t stop at the first and second bedrooms this time, making straight for the third. The door was slightly ajar, an inch at best. He pressed closer and peered in. Rick was sitting on the bed, unbuttoning his shirt, as Daryl paced back and forth in front of him.

“Don’t smell right,” Daryl was saying. “Aint never so simple as it seems. He got some kinda trick up his sleeve.”

“So you think we shouldn’t go.” Rick’s voice was quizzical. Like he really wanted to know what Daryl thought, like he might even change his mind if Daryl told him to.

“We should go,” Daryl said. Paul let out the breath he’d been holding. “But this aint no mercy mission. We want things, too. We got Asskicker to think of, an’ Maggie’s kid. So if the Son a God out there starts gettin shifty on us, I’ll fucken end him. Aint makin that mistake again.”

“You have to quit blaming yourself for that,” Rick said. “Helping people, it’s what you do. Always have done.”

“Not anymore.” Daryl shook his head angrily. He braced his foot against the bed and starting lacing the leg of his pants tightly against his calf. The muscles in his arms flexed as he worked. “Learned m’lesson out in that burnt forest.”

“You’re a good man.” Rick pulled a clean t-shirt over his head. “One of us has to be.”

“Yeah, fuck you too,” Daryl said, but his rough drawl had softened. He straightened up, and there was a different kind of fluidity to his movements as he sauntered over to Rick. Knocking Rick’s knees open and standing between them as Rick sat on the bed looking up at him. Paul swallowed. Rick rested his hands on Daryl’s muscular forearms.

“Maybe you oughta put some sleeves on,” he said lightly, but there was a hint of sourness in his voice. “Our friend Jesus might have trouble concentrating, otherwise.”

Paul felt himself break out into a sweat. Rick had his number, all right. Something warm had settled in his stomach the first time he locked eyes with Daryl, and every inch of exposed skin, every motion of that hard lithe body—

“Huh?” Daryl sounded nonplussed. “Hot as fucken Hades out there, man. Yer liable to get heatstroke in that damn coat a yers.” Brusquely, he leaned down and brushed his lips across Rick’s. “Let’s hit the road.”

“Hold up.” Rick caught Daryl by the hips. He tilted his head up, and after a moment Daryl leaned down. Paul watched them kiss with the easy intimacy of old lovers. Half-formed thoughts flitted through his mind. Daryl’s face, scarcely an inch from his own, the burning intensity of his eyes. How easily Daryl had slammed him against the wall. The heat of his body. He wanted to know the story behind every one of those tattoos, from the _x_ on his collarbone to the serpent on his thigh.

He was a persistent man and a natural optimist. If the front door was locked, he tried the back. But even _he_ couldn’t see a way between the two of them, standing shoulder to shoulder as they faced him down. Like covalent bonds, the strongest kind.

Rick’s hands migrated down over Daryl’s ass, sliding into his back pockets. Daryl tugged on Rick’s hair, making him groan into the kiss. Paul felt an ache in his chest. He was so engrossed in the sight of them that he nearly missed the approaching footsteps. He sprang away from the door just in time.

“What are you doing?” Rick’s son demanded, his good eye narrowing suspiciously. “You’re not supposed to be up here.”

“Looking for the bathroom,” he lied easily, giving the teenager his most winning smile.

“There’s one downstairs,” Carl informed him. His hand drifted towards the gun holstered on his leg. “Upstairs is _private._ ”

“My mistake,” Paul apologized smoothly. “I’ll just…”

As the RV rattled towards Hilltop, he watched them. Rick at the wheel, Daryl beside him with his feet propped up on the dashboard. He made sure his gaze was elsewhere whenever Rick’s chilly eyes sought him out in the rearview mirror. Once he was too slow. Rick’s brows contracted. He stretched out a hand and rested it lightly on Daryl’s knee.

Daryl slapped the hand away like it had stung him. “Hell ya playin at?” he hissed, looking wildly over his shoulder. Paul hid a smile in his beard. None of the others seemed to have noticed. Daryl cursed under his breath and shifted out of reach. Clearly ruffled, he put a cigarette between his lips. Then he glanced over at Maggie, dozing against Glenn’s shoulder, grimaced, and stuck it behind his ear. He settled for cracking his knuckles, glowering at Rick through his bangs.

Paul had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. If he couldn’t have Daryl, at least he could have fun with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUNDTRACK
> 
> Back Door Man - Howlin' Wolf  
> [surely not how the Wolf meant for his song to be interpreted, but I couldn't help myself]


End file.
